The Color Of Magic by Terry Pratchett

Ah, the first installment to the classic Discworld series. I first read Terry Pratchett in Good Omens, his awesome collaboration with Neil Gaiman. After that, I knew I wanted to read more of his stuff. Prachett is very funny and his humor is very British. 

The Discworld is way too complicated to explain, unless perhaps if you have a degree in astrophysics or something....so I'll just sum up the story here. This one introduces us to Rincewind, a cowardly and inept wizard that never finished wizard school and only knows one spell (but he can't even remember that.) Actually, a summery is right here. 

This book was a lot of fun. Once you get the basic idea of Discworld, which you can basically just expect the most absurd everything, you can enjoy Rincewind on his many mis-adventures with the foreigner Twoflower and The Luggage.

There's nearly 30 of these damn books and I'll get around to reading them all someday. The good thing is that they are really set up in different storylines with different characters...there's the Rincewind ones, Watchmen ones, Witches, and the ones about Death. I'm going to read the second Rincewind book and then probably jump to the first books in the Watchmen and Death series. Anyways, as much as I liked this book, it is said that the books get a lot better as they go on as Pratchett really finds his groove in his monstrous creation that is Discworld.

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some recent movies...

The Kingdom - Better than I expected, I'd actually sad this is really really good...moving and exciting. I liked it a lot.

Michael Clayton - This was pretty good, although I went in with high expectations. George Clooney is a damn fine actor in a drama. It's a white-collar thriller about high power attorneys, a kind of movie that's rare...playing to the intellectual. The timeline goes back and forth which is great in some movies, but seemed to complicate this story a little too much. The ending was a little weak too...you're left wondering what Michael is going to do next. 

Breach - Watched this a second time with my wife. I really enjoyed it the first time and it was equally exciting the second. Chris Cooper is definitely an fantastic actor and he really gives a superb performance in this. I liked this movie so much I didn't even mind Ryan Phillipe in this...even though I think he's a shitty actor. He still got on my nerves in this, but everything else outshines him and makes me see past it. Laura Linney is pretty great in this too. 

Shattered Glass (2003)

This is the story of Stephen Glass, the journalist from The New Republic that got caught fabricating stories in 1998. It was a major headline back then and I was looking forward to seeing this movie, which I've heard Hayden Christensen is actually good in. Well I'm happy to report he is actually good in this, I was refreshingly surprised too. 

The cast is great as well including Chloe Sevingy, Peter Sarsgaard, Steven Zahn, Rosario Dawson, and that chick that plays Rose on Two and a Half Men. Really good movie...definitely worth checking out.

I give it an 8/10.

IMDB

Thank You For Smoking (2005)

I just remembered I did watch a movie last week...see this is why I write this blog, so this stuff doesn't just leave my memory shortly after I've seen/read something.

This movie was pretty great. I thought Aaron Eckhart was awesome. I don't really remember seeing him in anything else...except No Reservations which was pretty shitty. (Looking at his IMDB page, I see he's been in a ton of movies I've seen...guess he's just up to leading man status.)

Anyways, I knew this was going to be good and it was. It was a hilarious and entertaining satirical look at the way big business handle PR. 

I give it a 8/10.

IMDB

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

I just realized I haven't posted in over a week. I don't think I've watched a movie in that time either...

I did finish a book though.

Man, I really enjoyed most of this book. It's a thick one, running almost 600 pages. It follows a guy, Shadow, who is released from prison a few days early because his wife has died in a car wreck. On his way back home, he meets Mr. Wednesday, who is eventually unveiled as a god, and hires Shadow to be his bodygaurd/errand boy. Shadow then enters a strange world were ancient gods exist everywhere, coming to America in the hearts and minds of settlers for thousands of years. Wednesday represents the old gods, and is trying to wage a war against the new American gods, which represent modern things like technology. This is where is gets pretty weird and hard to follow. There's just way too many characters, I had a hard time keeping up with who was what god and why they were even in the story at all. Then it climaxes in a battle that never happens, all the while going on and on for 100 pages of long, descriptive dream passages and shit that was hard to get through. When it does finally get back on track, many loose ends are tied up, but at that point, after all the god business and Shadow dying and walking "Backstage" to end the battle, and then coming back to life...the little details of what was happening back in the little town of Lakeside, Wisconsin, while nice to end the story of those characters, seemed like an afterthought.

Like I said, I really enjoyed most of it.  I just think it got really slow and really dense towards the climax. At least this is the thickest of Gaiman's novels, so I think I'll still enjoy the next one I'm going to read, The Anansi Boys. It's similar to American Gods, sharing some characters and the universe itself, but is said to be much a much lighter read.

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Hot Rod (2007)

So I decided to waste 90 mins, and I wasn't too bummed I choice this movie. I am a faithful SNL viewer, and I like Andy Samberg, which is saying that I knew what I was getting into with this movie. Plus a friend of mine told me the other day that he loved this movie.

It turns out it's exactly what you would expect...a stupid little comedy that some people will like and others not. It's definitely not a good movie in the literal sense, but it did make me laugh more than a few times. Isla Fisher plays the love interest and standard "straight man" to Samberg's child-like character. It's like a lesser Billy Madison basically, although that movie is way funnier and a better movie in comparison.

Overall I give it a 6/10 just because there are some good jokes and I like Samberg's style. He has a pretty good comedic career ahead of him...but movies like this aren't going to win him any awards...not that it was meant to. It was the usual Lorne Michael's production showcasing a rising SNL star. I'm sure it's already made plenty of profit and will continue to entertain teenage boys and adult stoners for a long time to come.

IMDB

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

I finally saw this movie and man, it was as beautiful and twisted as I knew it would be. 

You know exactly what to expect from a Tim Burton movie...fantastic, over the top characters...gorgeous cinematography....hey, I'll even give him credit for his Planet of the Apes remake. I can't really say anything bad about this movie...I don't know what could have been done any better. It really is a flawless piece of filmmaking art.

The only thing I didn't love was the musical aspect of it...the whole thing is a musical if you didn't know. Not that it was bad at all by any means, but it's not exactly a movie I could watch over and over again like nearly all of my Burton faves. But it's definitely a movie everyone should experience at least once (if you can handle a little blood splattering gore!)

I give it a 9/10. 

IMDB

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

So if the last few books were departures from the kinds of books I usually read...this one is definitely more along the lines of my favorites.

If you don't know, Neil Gaiman was the author of the hugely popular Sandman comics back in the day. I didn't read them, but I heard plenty about them, and will get around to reading them someday. Since then he has written some popular novels as well, and I never got around to reading them...until now. I decided to start with his first novel, Neverwhere which was first published around 1997. 

I loved it. 

I'll write more later.

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Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

So after I stepped outside my normal reading styles with The Kite Runner, I decided I should start reading some modern classics. This is my first by Kurt Vonnegut, but it won't be my last. Not only was the book a fantastic story, I found his writing style very entertaining. 

I'll write more later.

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The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

I read this recently and really enjoyed it. It's not the type of book I usually go for but I heard a lot about it and thought it might be a good foray into something a bit more cultural than my usual reads. I'm glad I read it.

I just wanted to get this posted before I forget to add it, but I'll write more later about it.

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King of California (2007)

Starring Michael Douglass and Evan Rachel Wood

This movie was decent for a one time viewing. I like Michael Douglass and he was fun watching him play a crazy guy searching for buried treasure. Evan Rachel Wood played his daughter and I guess she was alright too. I've only ever seen her in Thirteen, so now she's a bit older and seems like a doppelganger of Leelee Sobieski (which I like better.)

There's not a lot of substance to this movie, and ultimately it feels like another indie movie that tries to be quirky and cute. I enjoyed that it was only around 90 mins. Not much more to say...check it out only if you've got nothing better to do or if you dig the actors.

I give it a 6/10.

IMDB

The Innocent Man by John Grisham

I love John Grisham books. Well, his legal thrillers anyway. He's written a couple of different types of novels, like one about Christmas and a couple about football. Maybe one day I'll check them out, but until then anything from Grisham revolving around a lawyer or courtroom, and I'm on it. I've read every one of his legal thrillers which, having just counted, stands at 16 including this one.

The Innocent Man has the distinction of being his first work of non-fiction. It tells the true story of events leading to the arrest and conviction of Ron Williamson, a down-on-his-luck Oklahoma man, for murder, and his time on death row.

As the title suggests, Ron Williamson is an innocent man, but it wasn't just a mistake that led to this injustice, it was the local police and local judiciary that not only allowed it to happen, but in many ways precipitated it from start to finish.  It reads like a textbook case of what is wrong with the system, and how someone could get convicted on circumstantial evidence and lazy and corrupt police work. Ron is eventually cleared by DNA after 12 years on death row. Sounds like a happy ending, but it's anything but. To see how much of the man's life was taken from him, and the toll it had on him, is devastating. And it's not only Ron Williamson that suffers, there are a few other stories told alongside his that mirror each other in their miscarriage of justice.

This book might enforce a lot of beliefs against the death penalty and I couldn't argue that it's not a great example of how things can and do go very wrong.  I could go on awhile about the politics of the issue, but I'll just wrap this up by saying I liked the book. Check it out if you're interested in an illuminating experience into criminal justice.

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No County For Old Men (2007)

I'm sure you've heard a lot about this movie so I'm not going to go into the details. I just want to say that it's by far one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. The performances by everyone are Oscar-worthy and I bet Javier Bardem is going to win one for it. He was scary and intense as shit. This movie is exactly what a gripping thriller should be....suspenseful as hell. I even loved that Woody Harrelson is in it for a bit too, as I didn't know he was. Give the Coen brothers credit for bringing another American classic to the screen. 

I give it a 9/10. 

IMDB  

He Was A Quiet Man (2007)

Elisha Cuthbert Alert!!!

Ok, you can see why I would want to watch this movie. Nothing against Christian Slater, I like him fine, but I still think his best work was the awesome skateboarding movie Gleaming The Cube! I'm just kidding, he really is a great actor (and Gleaming The Cube is really a great movie.) Anyways, Slater plays a terrific loser/lonely guy character that has a horrible office job working in a cubicle and being harassed by his boss. The one bright spot in his day seems to be getting a glimpse of Elisha Cuthbert's character which he admires from a far. He keeps a gun in his desk and daydreams about killing his coworkers or blowing up the building...only until one day when another office loser beats him to it and opens fire killing a number of people. Slater confronts the gunman when he sees that one of the wounded is Cuthbert, and the gunman plans to finish her off with a second shot. Slater then shoots the guy and becomes the hero, while Cuthbert becomes a paraplegic. It's a pretty strange movie, with an ending I appreciated but did not entirely enjoy. I would go more into the plot, but I think it's best going into this movie with a clear mind. 

I wish Elisha Cuthbert was in it more, but it's ok...she's amazingly hot whether she's a paraplegic or not. She also shows her tits in this but I'm pretty sure it was a body double...boo. Still very much worth watching as the acting is quite good from everyone (did I mention that William H Macy is in this too, and he's always great). Overall it's an interesting peace of filmmaking.

I give it a 7/10.

IMDB

Tin Man (2007)

This was that mini-series on Sci-Fi Network that's a total "re-imagining" of the Wizard of Oz. 

This one was hard to get through. I am not a fan of most of the output from the Sci-Fi Network, because frankly, most of it sucks. I love good sci-fi, but their programming is just empty garbage...filler for sci-fi fans. What attracted me to this is the lovely Zooey Dashenal who I think is super hot, but there's nothing sexy about her in this one. Her performance is horrible, along with every other actor on the screen. This was supposed to be an event, so I had higher expectations. But it was the same sci-fi filler crap...shitty acting, shitty directing...and of course these days it's not too hard to at least have decent special effects, so the sets and landscape parts looked good, but then something else looked completely awful. For example, notice how horribly acted the scenes are when DG raises or hard to show someone that mark. Or when the flying batguys grab her and pick her up. She's just hanging there like she's on a hook. It looked ridiculous. The "wicked witch" part is played by Kathleen Robertson which I remember as Clare from 90210. I think she's pretty hot, so that helped me make it through the whole thing, but her performance was pretty bad too. It was like she got the part on Sunday and showed up Monday to film the whole thing. Did she rehearse her part at all? And other people were like "Yeah, that's the way to play it"?? I don't get it. 

Basically, they really did throw this thing together without even TRYING to make it good. I'm sure it sounded like a good idea in the beginning, so I don't blame the actors for signing up...but the director just sucks. Did he even ask for more than one take of any scene?? because I can't believe the shitty performances he got out of every actor. 

I gave this a generous 4/10 and I don't know why. I really did like the story overall, I just wish they put a little more effort into making this a good movie and not the generic crap the network usually produces. 

IMDB

Equilibrium (2002)

 I had never even heard about this movie until I ran across it online and saw that Christian Bale was in it and it's high rating at IMDB, so I thought it'd be worth checking out. 

Well, it's definitely worth checking out although it's tragically flawed in many ways. Although it basically wants to be the Matrix, underneath is a pretty good movie about a post-apocalyptic future where Big Brother rules and everyone is expected to behave like cattle or face death. Yeah, similar story lines are done to death, but this one is lifted by Christian Bales performance enough to keep you interested. In the meantime, the fight scene choreography is pure Matrix, very creative and intense, but also has a cheap feel to it. And they seemed out of place in what was mostly a steady moving suspense thriller...suddenly shit just goes hyperactive. That's not to say the fights aren't entertaining, they just could have been filmed or edited so much better. Plus it features the shitty techno soundtrack that comes out of nowhere every time a fight scene begins. It just makes it so amateurish. 

The real reason to stay is a good story and solid acting, so it's worthy of a watch if you're a fan of Christian Bale or sci-fi in general. I gave it a 6/10.