Susan Hated Literature

Writ & Dir: James Grey

• Joaquin Phoenix … Robert ‘Bobby’ Green
• Eva Mendes … Amada Juarez
• Mark Wahlberg … Capt. Joseph ‘Joe’ Grusinsky
• Robert Duvall … Deputy Chief Albert ‘Bert’ Grusinsky
• Alex Veadov … Vadim Nezhinski
• Danny Hoch … Jumbo Falsetti

Bobby is a night club manager. It is the 1980’s, New York. Life is good. Until the day his brother comes calling. Bobby’s brother, Joe, you see, is a cop. A drugs cop and he arrives in full on SWAT-mode at the club. This is not a way to ensure peaceful family get togethers. Especially considering that we already know there is tension in the family. You can just guess at the resulting tensions. But then the Russian bad-guys organise a hit on Joe. Bobby is stung into action and swears revenge. In this life or the next.^[1]

Continue Reading »

Related posts

• Miami Vice (4)
• Max Payne (2)
• The Departed (6)
• Zodiac (0)
• War (0)

Writ & Dir: Sylvester Stallone

• Sylvester Stallone - Rocky Balboa
• Burt Young - Paulie
• Milo Ventimiglia - Rocky Jr.
• Geraldine Hughes - Marie
• James Francis Kelly III - Steps
• Antonio Tarver - Mason ‘The Line’ Dixon

It isn’t often that you describe a boxing film as sweet. It isn’t often I describe a film as sweet and mean that in a positive light, but if I was asked for a one word review of Rocky Balboa, then sweet would be it. And that is sweet in an “awwww” sense of the word, not the Col. O’Neil from SG type sweet.

Honestly, I think this is my favourite film of the year so far.

I know, it is only January, and the films I’ve seen so far haven’t been great, but I really, really enjoyed this film. I’m not saying it a great piece of art or anything, it is what it is, a Rocky film.

I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who greeted the news that Stallone was making a new Rocky film with a snort of laughter. I enjoyed the first film, and have seen a few of the others, RTE had a Rocky season at some stage, but I never loved any of them. And I fully expected this to be a piece of drivel. But then I saw some of the trailers, and began to want to see it. And, lo, it was great.

You know the basic plot, Rocky, in his fifties starts to think about making a comeback in a small way. Fighting in local, small bouts, because a fighter is all he has ever been. But the current undisputed world heavyweight champ isn’t too popular. He wins all the time, and his opponents don’t offer much, so the public begins to turn away. His promoters are worried about the lack of revenue, so when a tv show uses a computer simulation to find out who would win, Mason “The Line” Dixon or Rocky “The Italian Stallion” Balboa in his prime, and Rocky wins, they get very interested.

Can I say again I really enjoyed this film. From the little flashbacks and echoes to the earlier films, that music, everything was just right.
Is it clichéd and full of cheese? Yes, but in a good way. In a way Rocky has pretty much the same message as The Pursuit of Happyness, but it lacks the selfishness that I think was at the heart of my problem with that film. Instead of trying to succeed at anything in particular Rocky is about being true to yourself. Taking all the knocks life has to offer and still moving on.

This’ll be one I add to the dvd collection, I may even buy the earlier films, even the ones I know are trash. No pain no gain afterall.

IMDb | First Showing | Cinematical | Flimsy.com | Word of Mouth (scroll down for Rocky)

_{Image source}

Related posts

• You ain’t so bad, you ain’t so bad, you ain’t nothin’. C’mon, champ, hit me in the face! My mom hits harder than you! (5)
• Celebrate! (5)
• Yo! (6)
• We3 (0)
• TT #10 (16)

The Journals of May Dodd
Author: Jim Fergus
ISBN: 0312199430
DDC: 813.54
See also: Library Thing ; HistoricalFavorites ; Jim Fergus.com

23 March 1875
Today is my birthday, and I have received the greatest gift of all - freedom! I make these first poor scribblings aboard the westbound Union Pacific train with departed Union Station Chicago at 6.35 a.m. this morning, bound for Nebraska Territory.

In 1854 a Cheyenne chief asked the United States government for one thousand white brides to marry into the people. Cheyenne society was a matrilineal society the resulting children, to their minds, would belong to white society. Yet they would also have an understanding of Cheyenne ways, and so it seemed a good way of joining white man’s society. Of course this didn’t go down to well in the white man’s world, and the offer was refused.

In this novel Fergus imagines what would have happened had the US govt decided to go along with this Cheyenne idea. In secret, of course.

The main protagonist in the novel is May Dodd, it is her journal that we are reading. And the letters she wrote to her family members back east, knowing she would never post them, and so using them more as a method of venting her frustrations and feelings at life in general. Before she agreed to join the Brides programme May was locked away in a mental asylum. The reason, she tells us, is that she committed the crime of falling in love. Falling in love and having two out of wedlock children with a man far beneath her in class and standing. Her family were not impressed and so arranged to have her placed out of sight, and out of mind. And, in order to escape the asylum she agrees to travel west and marry a strange savage Indian.

The whole book is told through Dodd’s eyes, she introduces us to the other women who have likewise agreed. The criminal, the insane, the poor and the adventurous. But there aren’t a thousand, she and her companions are the first train to leave the east. And as gold is discovered in Indian territory, they will be the last.

I quite enjoyed this book. It tells a good story and moves at a fairly decent pace. The writing style is very readable and it is all entertaining.

But May and her companions don’t really seem all that well-drawn as characters. Part of that I suppose is because it is May who is describing the other women, and indeed the Cheyennes she meets. And she describes them in cliches and stereotypes. We have the southern plantation lady with a drawl, a poodle, and a reluctance to marry any dahmn niggah, there are the Irish red headed twins with their thieving and oirish accents. The silent and noble Cheyenne chief, the dirty no-good half-breed.

And because of that I was never really all that gripped by this read. And it also made me wonder of some of the events that happened, or character traits, were there simply to move the plot along. Merely a device to get X here and Y there. Still, it was entertaining, and raised some interesting points. But at the end of the day it wasn’t a great read.

Related posts

• Alias Grace (2)
• The Egyptologist (0)
• 1916 (1)
• The Sunne in Splendour (2)
• The Agony and the Ecstasy (7)

Dir: Andrew Davis
Writ: Ron L. Brinkerhoff

• Kevin Costner - Ben Randall
• Ashton Kutcher - Jake Fischer
• Sela Ward - Helen Randall
• Melissa Sagemiller - Emily Thomas
• Clancy Brown - Capt. William Hadley

Grizzled old veteran teaches impudent new pup how to be a rescue swimmer.
And that is about it.

But if that was all I said it’d make for a pretty short review, so I’ll just bullshit away here for a few minutes. The Guardian is a pretty crap version of Top Gun only instead of planes and war you get oceans and rescues. But the rest is fairly similar; elite training camp, male bonding, token females, death of team-members, training montage etc etc. But all in all it isn’t terrible.

It is however full of very cliché in film history, so there are no surprises at all, everything happens exactly as you might expect. Even the “cool slow-motion shots” occur when you think they might. The only thing surprising about this film is the length. It does drag towards the end. And the beginning. And the middle isn’t too well-paced either.

But it is still watchable, laughable yes, but also watchable.

IMDb | Reason To Believe | PopDVD | The Renaissance Man

Related posts

• Orcs (1)
• Ladder 49 (0)
• Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (9)
• War of the Worlds (2)
• War (0)

Dir & Writ: David Twohy
Writ: Jim Wheat & Ken Wheat

• Vin Diesel - Riddick
• Colm Feore - Lord Marshal
• Thandie Newton - Dame Vaako
• Judi Dench - Aereon
• Karl Urban - Vaako
• Alexa Davalos - Kyra

I’m a big fan of Pitch Black, that low budget horror in space. And I used to be a big fan of Vin Diesel’s but recent film-roles have made me all a bit meh. Still, I’m surprised it took me this long to get around to watching this film, but I finally caved and got the dvd last week. And I’m not too disapointed that I waited so long, because to be honest this film is trying so hard to be something that it isn’t.

I’m not sure why they bothered to keep the name of Riddick, marketing I suppose. Because this film is totally unrelated to the original. The universe we are shown in Chronicles is totally unlike that of Pitch Black, and the characters are also pretty unrecognisable, those few who actually survived the first film.

But lets ignore all that and try to treat Chronicles as though it were a standalone film, with no history.

It is a sci-fi film, one of those with the clichéd army of evil. Here in the form of Necromongers, an army who are trying to convert or kill all the planets of the universe in order to reach their promised land, the Under-verse. It tries to get out of the stereotype by having this evil army do battle, not with good, but with a “different sort of evil”. Trouble is it doesn’t really work, because in this film Riddick isn’t really all that evil. Sure he kills people but what action hero doesn’t? And everyone he kills here was actually trying to kill him first. Fair enough I suppose, maybe the ending of PB really did change him.

Overall this is a question of style over substance. Style over story. And style over characters.

And yes, it all looks great. In a “look at all our cool spaceships”. And they try and make this intricate back story about the Necromongers and the Furyans (I don’t really care how it should be spelled), and invents this reason why Riddick is so great at killing. But it just doesn’t work for me. None of the characters have even half the presence of those in PB. I did quite enjoy Karl Urban’s Vaako, but not enough to make up for the rest of the film’s shortcomings.

It is an average enough film. Nothing spectacularly bad about it, but nothing great either. Though I’ve heard that the director’s cut makes it a better film overall. I can’t say, I watched the theatrical cut.

Related posts

• Underworld: Evolution (5)
• Angel-A (4)
• Winter Rose (4)
• The Lake House (9)
• The Gunslinger (7)

Author: Christoper Paolini
ISBN: 0552552097
DDC:813.6

Eragon is the story of a boy and his dragon, and his quest to save the world. In a way, I suppose, it is a usual fantasy story. It has the magic, the unimportant village child who turns out to be special, the older wise guide who also turns out to be more than he appeared. There is also the journey part, the being hounded by evil. The strict definition of good and evil.

Lets just say it hits a lot of cliches.

Despite that it is still an entertaining story. There are a lot of cliches, and influences from other books can be seen. But this is a YA book, it isn’t meant to be anything fantasticaly original or subversive.

Overall it is a pleasant enough read, nothing that special, but nothing terrible either. I’ll probably continue on with the series.

| Alagesia.com | The Film | SF Review |

6/10, dragon, fantasy, YA

Related posts

• Throne of Jade (2)
• Temeraire (12)
• Goblin Quest (2)
• Empire of Ivory (0)
• Crossroads of Twilight (0)

Do you know why I really hate labels^[1], especially genre labels?
Well it is because everyone has their own definition of what fits a certain label, and they are only aware of what they know. Yet this lack of knowledge doesn’t stop them from commenting on the rest of their genre, or their relation to a particular genre.

It is a common theme of Dave Langford’s, and often comes up in his opinion piece in SFX. In his piece this month^[2] he tells us that Stephen Fry believes that Douglas Adams didn’t write any sci-fi and that Battlestar Galactica isn’t sci-fi, at least according to the Boston Globe.

So you’ll be glad to hear then that, although she doesn’t like fantasy, J.K. Rowling thinks she has subverted the genre in the Harry Potter books. But at least she admits she writes fantasy. And according to the article^[3] today in the Sunday Times she didn’t even realise that the first book was fantasy until after it was written.

So despite the fact that she hasn’t actually read all that much in the fantasy genre Rowling still thinks that she was trying to subvert the genre. Well, see, you can’t subvert something unless you have a vague idea what it is actually all about. So many people seem to think of fantasy as mindless escapism, with fairies and elves and oh-so-obvious bad guys and good guys that always win. And while books like that certainly exist they aren’t the only examples of fantasy. And sci-fi is not just Star Wars and Star Trek!

Of course there are a lot of sci-fi and fantasy clichés. The fact that something is a cliché means that it exists and is overused. That doesn’t mean they are the only forms of sci-fi and fantasy. Anyone who has read a fair amount of these genres will know that there are authors already out there subverting the cliches, and that HP is as far from subversion as it is possible to be.

This doesn’t mean I don’t like Harry Potter, but I don’t think it is earthshatteringly good either, it is a very readable entertaining children’s book.

[1] - I don’t really hate labels, I just hate them when they are used in a limiting fashion, and when the attitude seems to be, “oh, but that’s only *insert label* and so not worthy of anything” (back)

[2] -See As Others See Us, a previous example of Langford’s SFX columns. (back)

[3] - This article was previously published in Time and can be read online here

Related posts

• Orcs (1)
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (17)
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (0)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (17)
• Eragon (0)