Listening to David Sedaris’s Calypso a few days after Anthony Bourdain’s suicide is a bit jarring. David talks about his sister’s suicide with the same cold disinterest that he talks about everything else in this small collection of personal essays. His sister’s problems are on a par with bickering with his husband, wasting money on odd clothes in Japan, and picking up trash as he walks around the English countryside. This is nothing new, David has always been a narcissistic sociopath. His lack of empathy just seemed to stand out a little clearer for me this time around. I had…
Solo A Star Wars Story
Solo, a movie no one wanted made, telling a story no one wanted to hear. It could have been worse. It could have started with Han Solo being born in a dingy back room or in a dark alleyway. Instead, we start with a heist gone wrong. Han and his never before mentioned One True Love are stealing fuel, or something like fuel. This led to encounters with a lot of CGI. In fact, there is so much CGI in this film that I’m not entirely sure that there were any real people involved in the production at all. Lots…
Noir by Christoper Moore
I’m a fan of audiobooks, since I tend to do a lot of driving for work of one kind or another. So I got the audiobook version of Christopher Moore’s Noir. The reader, Johnny Heller, takes to the idea of a Noir novel with some gusto. He swings wildly from Edward G Robinson to JFK to FDR and once or twice meanders into Droopy the Dog and other cartoonish voices. For me, at least, a little of this goes a long way. I found myself lost more than once amid the voices that sounded a little too much alike a…
Lost In Space
Most people remember Lost In Space, if they remember it at all, as a very silly show filled with talking carrots, cyclops, and sexy floating green women. It didn’t start out that way, the first couple of episodes were pretty serious with a lot of Cold War tensions as Dr Smith is clearly an Agent for the Bad Guys. They fairly quickly dropped the Super Villain aspect of Dr Smith since this was a story that had no where to go. Either they killed Smith or they turned him into something less threatening. They chose the latter. He went from…
Ready Player One Movie
I read Ready Player One a few years after it came out. It was filled with pop culture references from the 1980s. the heroes were uber nerds that played video games, listened New Wave music, and could recite every episode of School House Rock. In short, this book was written for me. when word came down that Steven Spielberg was going to make the film adaptation, well, who better for the job? No one, that’s who. Ready Player One is a simple Quest story. Our hero spends most of his time in The Oasis, a virtual world along the lines…
Annihilation
Annihilation was an odd film. Much like Inception, the most lasting impression is the incredibly annoying music. A little of this alien thumping goes a long way, and it was pretty much constant. Annihilation tells the story of a woman whose husband has gone missing. He’s in the military and a year or so ago he went off an on a secret mission. She tries to find out what happened, but no one will tell her. Until one night when said husband appears at home. At first she is overjoyed to see him, but then she is a little nervous,…
Netflix’s Mute
Mute is a Science Fiction show that has no reason for being a Science Fiction show. It’s a simple revenge story. The kind that Charles Bronson made in the 1970s and Liam Neeson still makes today. But for some unknown reason, the story is set in some Sci Fi future with flying cars and giant billboards. A sci fi setting does not make a sci fi story, for that, you need some element of the story that has to do with, you know, science. Blade Runner is Science Fiction because it is about cyborgs, a futuristic bit of technology. If…
Altered Carbon
I read Altered Carbon when it first came out. I loved the idea and thought at the time this was one of those unfilmable stories. After all, its the tale of people who hop from body to body the way we change clothes. What actor would want to sign up for a role that would last one or two episodes? What audience could keep track of who was who? Then there was the overarching story with its multiple worlds, its super advanced tech, and its complex morality that no longer looks like morality at all. Netflix solves most of the…
Star Trek Discovery Season 1 Thoughts
The only thing that can happen to make this series make any sense at all is if they reveal the fact that it takes place in yet another parallel universe, and not the one known to fans of Star Trek. The Continuity Errors are through the roof, even if the constant addition of little nods in every episode to some past incarnation of Star Trek. The tech is too advanced, the unifroms are too different, and the Klingons-well, they just aren’t Klingons as we know them, Jim. Each Star Trek series has veered a little farther from the fun, heroic,…
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is fun and wacky and not exactly like those fun and wacky movies of the 50s and 60s that it tries so hard to copy. There’s a lot of swearing and a bit of nudity. There’s also the whole marriage breakup and the over the top Jewishness of most of the characters. Not something you saw a lot of in Doris Day and Cary Grant movies. Then there’s a woman transvestite who may or may not be homosexual. All we know for sure is she likes wearing men’s clothes. The bulk of the story revolves…