Dalton Trumbo was a screenwriter who was blacklisted in the good old days of The House Un-American Activities Committee. This was a dark time in American history. The Americans that the United States Government went after during these times were not blowing things up or flying airplanes into buildings. They were doing worse things, like making movies and TV Shows. The cast is brilliant, including Bryan Cranston, Diane Lane, Louis C.K., John Goodman, and Helen Mirren. The sets and costumes are great. The music is good in that it was both time period appropriate and blended into the background as…
Author: Jon Herrera
Writer, Photographer, Blogger.
The Revenant
Spoilers. Set in the good old days when a man could trap beavers by the ton and a mountain of bison skulls makes a couple of cameos. Our hero, such as he is, is a Jeremiah Johnson/Grizzle Adams sort of fellow. The Revenant has a real throwback to the 1970s kind of feel to it. The evil white men are killing the locals and the wildlife for pure greed. Only Leonardo DiCaprio is a sort of good guy. He’s gone Native and has an Indain son by an Indian woman who was killed by what looked like a French soilder.…
The King’s Justice
I’m so used to waiting ten or fifteen years for a new work from Stephen R. Donaldson, that I was totally shocked to see The King’s Justice. There are two novellas here, The King’s Justice and Augur’s Gambit. Both are set in magical worlds where the use of magic takes its toll on its users. These are stories with big words and often bothersome names. The cast of Augur’s Gambit includes Inimica Phlegathon decry the Fourth, the Queen’s Hieronomer, and her daughter Excrucia. Geez Louise. On the flip side, the hero of the King’s Justice is named Black. The stories…
Billions
When everyone is evil, who cares who wins? Showtime’s Billions stars Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis as powerful men who have no reason to fear anyone-well, maybe no reason to fear any man. Paul plays U.S. District Attorney Chuck Rhoades, a Submissive we see tied and tortured in the opening scene of the series. It seems he has a perfect conviction record and his father is a crime lord. Paul spends a lot of time frowning and scowling. I got the feeling he didn’t want any fucking merlot. Damian plays billionaire and possible mass murderer and inside trader Bobby Axelrod.…
Knife Fight on Esquire
Esquire is a Network I found while channel surfing in a motel one time. I ran across this show where Chefs cook meals using Mystery Ingredients. The prize, as Chef Ilan Hall of The Gorbals restaurant reminds us in the opening credits, is Bragging Rights. There was a brief moment in my life when I wanted to be a Chef. It may have been shortly after I read Kitchen Confidential. I applied to a couple of schools and even visited a couple of campuses. But it wasn’t really my cup of tea. Too much yelling and too much work. I…
Star Wars The Force Awakens
I enjoyed that more than I thought I would. ~Wil Wheaton minor spoilers. J.J. Abrams is a damned good director. He does a masterful job of blending practical and digital effects. His story is basically a retooling of Star Wars-which is basically a classic take on The Hero’s Journey. We have two new Heroes to follow around, a woman and a black man, two groups that were in little evidence in Star Wars. The Force Awakens was not a perfect film, but after the abomination of the Prequels, it’s like a ray of light falling into a dank, dark dungeon.…
Annual Dallas Cowboys Rant – 2015
It doesn’t matter if you win or lose, it’s how much money you put in the bank. Jerry Jones’ Personal Mantra Jerry Jones bought the Dallas Cowboys for $140 Million in 1989. The NFL franchise is currently worth around $4 billion. This is one of the many reasons that fans of the Dallas Cowboys football team, and haters of Dallas Cowboys owner Jones, have a hard time when it comes to Jerry and his bizarre football decisions. Clearly he is not a total idiot. He is only an idiot when it comes to on the field football. All the problems with…
Ready Player One
That 80’s Nerd Book. Ready Player One tells the story of the future, told through the eyes of a man forced to relive the 1980s. In the future, VR has taken over. Everyone spends most of their time jacked into the Matrix, here called The Oasis. They use Virtual Reality Headsets and gloves, and the richer folks use full body systems. Our hero, however, is not a rich guy. He’s a poor schmuck who lives in a stack of trailers outside of OKC. The creator of The Oasis dies, after becoming very rich, and he proclaims he will leave it…
The Leftovers
Leftovers-The Great Disappointment. Leftovers seems to be inspired by the Millerites. In 1844 a cult lead by Baptist Minister William Miller decided that Jesus Christ, the greatest teaser and denier of all time, would be returning to earth to kill all the wicked and hand the keys to the car over to the meek. Miller picked a date and waited, nothing happened. He picked another date, and again, nothing happened. This put into motion the current fad in Christianity that the Good and the Holy will be sucked off the face of the earth and everyone else will be Left…
Mockingjay Part 2
The Hungery Games was a brilliant book. Catching Fire was sort of OK. Mockingjay was an abomination. Suzanne Collins last book in the Hunger Games Trilogy was a tough read, to say the least. Which I think might explain why the opening numbers for Mockingjay Part 2, a mere 101 Million dollars, were not as high as they could have been. Everyone that knew where the story was going didn’t want to see is acted out on the big screen. Spoilers. Mockingjay Part 2 was not nearly as soul crushing an experience as reading the book was. For one thing,…