Best of 2012
We traditionally have a post about the best of the past year in music or movies or television (or all three), so I thought I’d get us started on talking about 2012 by giving my list of the top contenders in each category. Read the rest of this entry
The Voice
Watching this show this season has been pretty rewarding. I have enjoyed a lot of the contestants and their performances but there is one that, to me, just stands way above all others.
Anyone else watching this? What are your favorites this season?
A Memory of Light
The final book in the Wheel of Time series, A Memory of Light, is finally about to hit the bookshelves.
Believe me when I say I have often thought that I would never be able to write that sentence. Read the rest of this entry
A Run on Twinkies?
As probably none of you know I have an actual career. I build tools for retailers to do data analytics. Such being the case I have access to about 40 super markets worth of sales data. In the wake of the collapse of Hostess no doubt some of you are wondering how quickly the Twinkies ran out.
Skyfall
The first thing that is immediately obvious about the new Bond movie is that it is not a sequel. I guess maybe this should not be a surprise, given that most Bond movies have always stood on their own, but after Quantum of Solace picked up where Casino Royale left off, you might be excused for believing that story line would continue into this movie as well. But no. The second thing that becomes immediately obvious is that this is a very different Bond from any we have seen before. Read the rest of this entry
New Bond
So a year that seemed like it should be fantastic has turned out to be pretty disappointing. Prometheus, the highly anticipated prequel to Alien turned out to be visually stunning but had a script so egregiously bad you couldn’t even lay back and just enjoy the visuals. Dark Knight Rises, while far from a bad movie, was pretty disappointing to many people as well. However one of the highly anticipated movies of the year, Skyfall, is thus far getting nothing but rave reviews.
It’s hard to talk about a film that isn’t released for American audiences for about a month. However I thought I would throw out the lead song. I thought “Do You Know My Name” from Casino Royal was arguably one of the best Bond themes ever. Quantum of Solace was inferior to Casino Royal on most levels, including the music. It wasn’t a bad song but somehow was pretty forgettable.
First CD
So, the CD is 30 years old. What was your first CD? I think mine was C&C Music Factory.
What was yours?
Movie Review: Looper
Rian Johnson’s Looper is a multi-layered action-sci-fi-drama that delivers strong performances and a compelling, if somewhat brutal, cinematic experience.
Looper takes place in a dystopian near future. In 2044, poverty and crime are rampant, and control of everything has been taken over by gangsters. Time travel doesn’t exist yet, but it will three decades later, and it will be highly illegal, not well understood, and only used by criminals. Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is so-called “looper,” an very specialized assasin (executioner, really) whose job it is to go to a pre-established location at a given time, and execute hog-tied, gagged and hooded persons that are zapped back from 30-years in the future as soon as they arrive in the present. The looper then disposes of the body and collects his reward, bars of silver that are sent back with the person to be executed. At some point, every looper knows that the crime bosses in the future may decide to “close the loop” by sending the looper’s future self back to be killed. For this special killing, the looper is rewarded in gold bars and released from any further obligations or duties. All of this is revealed in the movie’s first few minutes–much of it through voice-over exposition–so when Joe find himself staring at his future self (Bruce Willis), it’s not at all a surprise, but entirely expected. (If you’ve seen the Looper trailer, you know this is coming, but this is really all premise, not spoiler.) But, when it does happen, something’s gone awry. Old Joe isn’t bound, gagged and hooded as expected, and this gives him just enough time to cold-cock his younger self, escape his fate, and begin pursuit of his own future-changing agenda in the past/present. Mayhem, needless to say, ensues.
Is anyone watching Revolution?
What do you think so far?
I’m still undecided. I think it has potential, but so far it hasn’t really hooked me.
Indiana Jones Geekery, Part One
Update: 3/Sep/12
The book came. Begins in Chicago with Indy almost getting into trouble with some bootleggers before he heads off to the Sorbonne to begin his graduate studies. Breathless!
***
This site is home to the favourite thing I have ever written. With rage pouring through my creative veins, I wrote a review of Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull which, unlike most of what I have written in the past, is a post I can still read and am still proud of.
There may be better films, but Raiders is the greatest (sic). So when I caught it on the telly the other night, I inevitably paused between channels to see Indy race away from Belloq and urge Jock to “start the plane!” Jock has “Sky Pirates” written on his shirt and I thought, as one does, “I would like to own that shirt . . . and who are the Sky Pirates anyway?”
(Such is the way my brain works.)
I’ve long enjoyed the Lucasfilm Expanded Universe (EU). In fact, many of the Star Wars Dark Horse comics are the best things to happen to Star Wars since 1980. I suspected that my questions regarding Jock (also, where did he get his pet snake Reggie?) had been answered and the Indiana Jones wiki confirmed it:
Jock Lindsey was an American freelance pilot. Lindsey cut his teeth as a stunt pilot performing in Midwest airshows and relocated to Venezuela after a rumored flight-related tragedy. He frequently was hired by Indiana Jones to fly the archaeologist to remote parts of the world.
And so for reasons perhaps related to my mild OCD I have decided not only to read more about Jock and his Sky Pirates, but also to enjoy the Indiana Jones EU chronologically. I am skipping the Young Indiana Jones ouevre (a few years ago my kids and I did a young Indy marathon) and am starting instead in 1922 which is the agreed terminus for the adventures of non-Young Indy, marking the first fictional event after Hollywood Follies (the last of the Young Indy films).
I have ordered from Ebay a copy of Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi, a novel in which “Indy descends into the bottomless pit of the serpent god and finds a sacred stone that holds the key to the [Delphic] oracle’s prophecies.” Sounds hokey but fun and I shall probably read it to the kids.
Kultur? Obviously not, but I need an escape from the middle-brow psychedelia of Johns Fowles’s The Magus (my summer read) and I have a feeling I’m going to love this journey of geekery. There are a dozen novels, a few comic books and short stories, and a couple of video games.
I have even cleared a space on my shelf for this Indiana Jones literary collection. Right next to my newly restored Rancor. Expect reviews here at KB. Should be riveting stuff.
