Many, many reviews...
Mar. 2nd, 2017 02:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearThree books, four films!
Last weekend, we went to Nerdcon: Nerdfighteria in Boston, and they had a book club session, based around Your Heart Is A Muscle The Size Of A Fist, by Sunil Yapa. It tells the story of the World Trade Organisation riots in Seattle in 1999, from the perspective of seven different fictional people the writer imagines being there. It’s not a book I would have chosen for myself, and I wouldn’t have finished it, if it hadn’t been for the book club. Having so many different point of view characters (the first time we go back to one is chapter five) made it very difficult to get a handle on the story to begin with, and I didn’t really connect to any of them until a long way through the book.
The style frequently drew attention to itself, rather than serving the story, and there were multiple continuity errors and problems with plot points, which jarred me out of the narrative and prevented me from engaging fully with the book. However, it must have reached me eventually because, by the end, I was desperate for the estranged father and son to have their moment of reconciliation, and there were several aspects of the ending that were really beautiful and emotive. So, while I definitely struggled with the book for most of it, having started it, I’m glad I saw it through.
On a totally different note, I listened to the next Cherub book last week - The Sleepwalker. As per usual, I liked a lot of the characters, there were both amusing and exciting passages, and I’ll definitely be continuing with the series. But also as usual, the plot didn’t cohere very well, because only two characters actually went on a mission, while the main protagonist spent the book in training exercises and work experience, and it was way too short to really present value for money from an audiobook credit. Still, it had some hard-hitting messages about abusive relationships, and an interesting discussion of the assumptions people make about other people’s motives based on their background and ethnicity.
Yesterday, I completed another short story collection, this one by Scottish genre writer Neil Williamson. It was titled Secret Language, and a lot of the themes of the stories were about communication, particularly in relation to our interactions with and responses to music. Two of the stories freaked me out rather, but most of them demonstrated some fascinating concepts and were well executed. I thought they could have been ordered differently, so the ones about music were spread out more through the collection, as lumping several of them together just made it feel repetitive, even though each story was distinct and well written. I find, though, that I generally like sci-fi/fantasy short story collections that are all by one author, and I hope to produce one of my own later in the year.
I’ve also watched four films in the last couple of weeks, the first of which was John Wick: Chapter Two. If I hadn’t seen and loved the first one, I would probably have said this was an excellent action movie, and I did mostly really enjoy it. It had some amazing world building, adding to the wonderfully quirky and ridiculous underworld of international assassins introduced in the first film. I particularly loved the weaponry sommelier in the equipping montage when John Wick arrives in Italy. My favourite characters from the first one were present and correct - especially Winston and Charon - and there were a few good additions to the case - always nice to get the opportunity to look at Ruby Rose. However, the first film was so perfectly constructed and flowed so beautifully, that it was always going to be difficult to follow, and I was disappointed by the episodic and fragmented structure of this one. I also felt the violence was somewhat lacking in the balletic choreography of the first one, leaving me a little cold in some of the lengthier fight scenes. It really made me laugh a lot, though, particularly in the opening section, which linked back to the main plot thread of the first film, and the ending left me very much wanting a Chapter Three, so overall it was a highly enjoyable experience, and I really hope the franchise continues.
Snowden was both better and worse than I expected. The story is an example of something I never would have been interested in before I met Dave, but something in which I have become quite strongly invested, due to his explanations and updates. So, I was intrigued to see a dramatisation of it. I thought it took too long to really get going, and the framing narrative of the meetings with the journalists in Hong Kong didn’t have enough tension to pull my interest through all the backstory. However, the last third really ramped up the suspense and excitement, and turned the film into quite a gripping thriller. I also liked the development of Snowden’s relationship with his girlfriend, and the portrayal of all the different forces that were pulling him in different directions before he decided what he was going to do.
Hidden Figures was all-out excellent. It was fun, funny, tense, interesting, had a powerful message that was mostly delivered very effectively, and it felt both important and enjoyable. So, it struck a very good balance. The characters felt like real people - making a living, raising families, struggling against societal inequality and achieving amazing things, but in a believable and engaging way. Some of the dialogue and message delivery felt a bit blunt at times, but I was invested all the way through and fully engaged in both the characters and the plot. I particularly liked Octavia Spencer’s characters, Dorothy, and her approach of recognising when she was about to be made obsolete and figuring out how to make herself and her team indispensable again. Great film - highly recommended.
Lastly, on the plane to Boston, I watched Southside With You, a dramatisation of the first date between Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson. I have no idea how accurate it was to real events, but it felt very contrived and quite stilted. There were too many significant moments in too short a space of time for the beginning of the relationship to feel credible, and the dialogue was often rather stilted and unrealistic. Also, it made me wonder when a man trying to persuade a woman to go out with him transitions from admirably persistent to borderline harassment, especially when they’re colleagues and she can’t really get away from him. Still, I’m assuming that wasn’t an intentional discomfort on the part of the film-makers, and bits of it were at least quite appealing and interesting.
Last weekend, we went to Nerdcon: Nerdfighteria in Boston, and they had a book club session, based around Your Heart Is A Muscle The Size Of A Fist, by Sunil Yapa. It tells the story of the World Trade Organisation riots in Seattle in 1999, from the perspective of seven different fictional people the writer imagines being there. It’s not a book I would have chosen for myself, and I wouldn’t have finished it, if it hadn’t been for the book club. Having so many different point of view characters (the first time we go back to one is chapter five) made it very difficult to get a handle on the story to begin with, and I didn’t really connect to any of them until a long way through the book.
The style frequently drew attention to itself, rather than serving the story, and there were multiple continuity errors and problems with plot points, which jarred me out of the narrative and prevented me from engaging fully with the book. However, it must have reached me eventually because, by the end, I was desperate for the estranged father and son to have their moment of reconciliation, and there were several aspects of the ending that were really beautiful and emotive. So, while I definitely struggled with the book for most of it, having started it, I’m glad I saw it through.
On a totally different note, I listened to the next Cherub book last week - The Sleepwalker. As per usual, I liked a lot of the characters, there were both amusing and exciting passages, and I’ll definitely be continuing with the series. But also as usual, the plot didn’t cohere very well, because only two characters actually went on a mission, while the main protagonist spent the book in training exercises and work experience, and it was way too short to really present value for money from an audiobook credit. Still, it had some hard-hitting messages about abusive relationships, and an interesting discussion of the assumptions people make about other people’s motives based on their background and ethnicity.
Yesterday, I completed another short story collection, this one by Scottish genre writer Neil Williamson. It was titled Secret Language, and a lot of the themes of the stories were about communication, particularly in relation to our interactions with and responses to music. Two of the stories freaked me out rather, but most of them demonstrated some fascinating concepts and were well executed. I thought they could have been ordered differently, so the ones about music were spread out more through the collection, as lumping several of them together just made it feel repetitive, even though each story was distinct and well written. I find, though, that I generally like sci-fi/fantasy short story collections that are all by one author, and I hope to produce one of my own later in the year.
I’ve also watched four films in the last couple of weeks, the first of which was John Wick: Chapter Two. If I hadn’t seen and loved the first one, I would probably have said this was an excellent action movie, and I did mostly really enjoy it. It had some amazing world building, adding to the wonderfully quirky and ridiculous underworld of international assassins introduced in the first film. I particularly loved the weaponry sommelier in the equipping montage when John Wick arrives in Italy. My favourite characters from the first one were present and correct - especially Winston and Charon - and there were a few good additions to the case - always nice to get the opportunity to look at Ruby Rose. However, the first film was so perfectly constructed and flowed so beautifully, that it was always going to be difficult to follow, and I was disappointed by the episodic and fragmented structure of this one. I also felt the violence was somewhat lacking in the balletic choreography of the first one, leaving me a little cold in some of the lengthier fight scenes. It really made me laugh a lot, though, particularly in the opening section, which linked back to the main plot thread of the first film, and the ending left me very much wanting a Chapter Three, so overall it was a highly enjoyable experience, and I really hope the franchise continues.
Snowden was both better and worse than I expected. The story is an example of something I never would have been interested in before I met Dave, but something in which I have become quite strongly invested, due to his explanations and updates. So, I was intrigued to see a dramatisation of it. I thought it took too long to really get going, and the framing narrative of the meetings with the journalists in Hong Kong didn’t have enough tension to pull my interest through all the backstory. However, the last third really ramped up the suspense and excitement, and turned the film into quite a gripping thriller. I also liked the development of Snowden’s relationship with his girlfriend, and the portrayal of all the different forces that were pulling him in different directions before he decided what he was going to do.
Hidden Figures was all-out excellent. It was fun, funny, tense, interesting, had a powerful message that was mostly delivered very effectively, and it felt both important and enjoyable. So, it struck a very good balance. The characters felt like real people - making a living, raising families, struggling against societal inequality and achieving amazing things, but in a believable and engaging way. Some of the dialogue and message delivery felt a bit blunt at times, but I was invested all the way through and fully engaged in both the characters and the plot. I particularly liked Octavia Spencer’s characters, Dorothy, and her approach of recognising when she was about to be made obsolete and figuring out how to make herself and her team indispensable again. Great film - highly recommended.
Lastly, on the plane to Boston, I watched Southside With You, a dramatisation of the first date between Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson. I have no idea how accurate it was to real events, but it felt very contrived and quite stilted. There were too many significant moments in too short a space of time for the beginning of the relationship to feel credible, and the dialogue was often rather stilted and unrealistic. Also, it made me wonder when a man trying to persuade a woman to go out with him transitions from admirably persistent to borderline harassment, especially when they’re colleagues and she can’t really get away from him. Still, I’m assuming that wasn’t an intentional discomfort on the part of the film-makers, and bits of it were at least quite appealing and interesting.
