Room was a good movie. Lots of moving moments. Great acting and a gripping story. It drifted slightly from the book, but it has been a few years since I read it. Much like the book, the first half of Room the movie is amazing. The tale of a little boy whose whole life has been lived in a storage unit. We have a modern take on Plato’s The Cave, if you only know the world of Room, is there really any more to the world? Jack is the hero of the story and his Ma is a bit mad.…
Category: Uncategorized
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,…
Mr Robot and the New World Order
A couple of years ago the Stock Market crashed. The Big Boys of the banking world, Citibank, Chase, Bank of America, etc were all trading for around a quarter a share. The reason for this was they were, and mostly still are, run by greedy, selfish, cheating bastards. Our fine Government stepped forward and said these Institutions were [easyazon_link identifier=”0143118242″ locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Too Big Too Fail[/easyazon_link]. Everyone who owed them money was more than happy to see them fail. No more bank, no more debt. Which brings us to [easyazon_link identifier=”B00YCVCBRS” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Mr Robot[/easyazon_link], an often brilliant show from the USA…
Ebook Publishing Fundamentals
Over the years I’ve watched one or two tutorials from Lynda.com, Tutsplus, and more recently Udemy. These are tutorials that are designed to be easy to watch and understand. As opposed to say, CreativeLIVE where the normal workshop is three days long and each day is around 8 hours of video. Ebook Publishing Fundamentals is a great course from lynda.com. Jason Matthews covers how to format your book in Microsoft Word, how to upload to Amazon and other booksellers, and suggestions on how to promote your book once it’s up and running. Like all such courses the videos are short…
Tomorrowland
Spoilers and such. Yeah, but, John, if The Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don’t eat the tourists. -Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park . . . Ok, I did like Tomorrowland, for the most part, but it has a few serious problems. I’ve seen a number of headlines that mention this film’s optimism, so I was a bit surprised to find George Clooney playing a Prepper waiting for the end of the world. I was also a bit surprised to see several cops murdered by smiling happy killer robots. But that pales when compared to Huge Laurie’s character, who…
Dreaming Spies
A few books back Laurie R. King sent Mary and Sherlock on a World Tour, so that Holmes and his wife, Miss Russell, got to see all kinds of exotic places and have all kinds of adventures. This time round we find the happy couple back home in England with an extended flashback of their last great destination, Imperial Japan. As with most Historical Authors, Laurie can’t resist dropping famous people into her tale. This time round the famous person is Hirohito, the sad little Emperor of Japan. Also mentioned in passing are Frank Lloyd Wright, the poet Basho, and…
Wayward Pines
The first episode of Wayward Pines hits a lot of familiar notes. A man wakes up in a strange hospital. He meets a mysterious person who offers him help. The people he meets all seem normal, in a Stepford Wives’ kind of way. When he tries to leave the town, he finds himself back in the middle of town. Our hero is a Special Agent and I kept waiting for them to call him Number 6. M Night Shyamalan made one really good movie, two so-so movies, and several really bad movies. Much like The Wachowski Brothers, instant success was…
Godzilla King of the Monsters
I grew up watching Godzilla movies. My favorites were the terrible ones where he fought King Kong and a robot Godzilla. The original Godzilla was kind of serious. Well, as serious as a story about a thirty story tall monster can be. 1954’s Godzilla King of the Monsters was a strange movie. Watching it now I can easily see the countless times Raymond Burr was wedged into the story and doubles were used for the actors in the original film. These are all shots with Raymond facing the camera and whoever he’s talking to has their back to the camera.…
The World’s End
Imagine the best day of your life was the time you and your pals went on a pub crawl-only you never actually finished the crawl? So many years later you decided to give it another go. This is the basic setup for The World’s End. Our heroes want to do the Golden Mile, going from pubs The First Post to The World’s End. For most film makers this would actually not be a bad movie. Old mates getting together and pining away for the good old days. But Simon Pegg is not most film makers, so about halfway through the…
Man of Steel
Superman is still an icon figure, but Man of Steel shows what happens after 80 years of random writers and artists taking their best and worst shots. Man of Steel is mix tape of Superman Greatest Hits with a little bit of everything tossed in for good measure. It wasn’t bad, but it was a little long winded on aspects of Clark Kent’s story that I have to believe anyone with a pulse is already familiar with. I really liked the look of Man of Steel, until he actually put on the cape and became Superman. Man of Steel feels most like a…