Book and Movie Reports by Ed

movie report: Jurassic World In the movie Jurassic World — you're never going to believe this! — scientists manage to re-create living dinosaurs, and exhibit them in a kind of park! Then, in a totally unforeseen turn of events, some of the dinosaurs actually escape from captivity and begin terrorizing innocent people!! Not only that, but in a fantastically out-of-nowhere development, among those terrorized are 2 kids whose lives have been shaken by their parents' divorce!!! Astonishingly, there are some bad people who are only interested in the dinosaurs for money or for military purposes, but — in a who-could-have-seen-this-coming shocker — they are killed by the very dinosaurs they sought to exploit!!!! Then, in an absolutely mind-blowing plot twist, the best-looking man and the best-looking woman on the island manage to get over their differences and work together to defeat the dinosaurs with pluck and courage!!!!! Plus — hold onto your hat! — they save the 2 ...

::spoilers ahead:: Okay, so I finally got up the courage to watch "Fear the Walking Dead" last night. I really liked it. It's not The Walking Dead or 28 Days Later. It's like a meta of those. There's a suspense and a tension that I really liked. These people have no idea of the hell that their handbasket is headed for, but WE do, and everything that we see them do is seen with the knowledge that the shit is truly about to hit the fan. I think the show's creators/writers are actually really clever about how they're exploiting this situation, with us knowing what's coming the whole way. It reminds me of what Hitchcock said about the difference between thrills and suspense. Imagine a scene where 2 guys enter a room, talk about baseball for 5 minutes, and then boom! -- a bomb explodes, killing one or both of them. It's a shock. It's a surprise. It's a thrill. Now change that scene in one w...

Movie report: The Dark Knight Returns Part 1 “The Dark Knight Returns” is probably my favorite Batman story of all time. The four-issue 1986 graphic novel by Frank Miller and Klaus Jonson contains not only terrific lines (“This would be a good death. But not good enough.”), but some of the most striking images ever. Part 1 of this story was turned into an animated film in 2012, and why it’s taken me so long to see it, I have no idea. The animated film is terrific, totally faithful to the original, but making it all more real. The premise of the story is that Batman has been retired for ten years, partly due, we learn, to the death of the second Robin, Jason Todd. The now 55-year-old Bruce Wayne has been trying to channel his energies into  the rehabilitation of villains like Two-Face and Joker, as well as indulging in ultra-macho, near-suicidal hobbies such as racing Formula One cars out of which he has ripped the safety equipment. In those ten years, Gotham City ...

Movie report: The Monuments Men There are good movies and there are bad movies. And then there are movies that make you want to re-write and re-shoot the entire thing. “The Monuments Men” is one of those movies. On paper, this movie must have looked like a sure-fire hit. During the chaos and destruction of World War 2 in Europe, a bunch of guys are trying to save precious works of art that the Nazis are systematically looting or destroying. Great premise, right? It’s like a reverse caper film. Plus, it has Nazis! Not only that, it has a terrific cast: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, and Cate Blanchett! And it has terrific big production values. Lots of battle scenes. Big armies. Tanks. Explosions. Everything you look for in a war movie. But, my gosh, the writing is awful. Nonsensical. Vague. Cryptic. Huh-inducing. And the directing. Jeez. Scenes don’t really end. They just sort of meander around and get lost. There’s one scene where two ...

movie report: Much Ado about Nothing (2012) If you don’t like Shakespeare, this might be the movie for you. If you do like Shakespeare, it definitely is. I heard about this movie when it first came out, but missed it in the theaters. What got my attention was that it was directed by Joss Whedon, who also directed some of my favorite movies and TV shows, including Firefly, Serenity, and The Avengers. Apparently, Whedon grabbed a bunch of his actor friends and shot the whole movie in 12 days. It’s modern dress, modern setting (his own large, but not a mansion, house), and modern acting. And it’s awfully funny. You’ll spot lots of actors you’ve seen in other recent things, including Amy Acker (Person of Interest), Nathan Fillion and Sean Maher (Firefly and Serenity), Clark Gregg (Avengers), and Riki Lindhome (Big Bang Theory). There are 3 intertwined stories. There’s recently been a civil war between two brother princes: Don Pedro won, Don John lost, and both are now guests of...

movie report: I Am Number Four (2011) I aimed to see this movie when it came out, for these reasons: • From the trailer, it looked like people had super powers. • It has a number in the title, upping its geek score. • The number in the title might actually be a character’s name, like Seven of Nine, which pushes its geek score into the stratosphere. But I didn’t, because it didn’t last too long in theaters because of terrible reviews. I watched it on DVD, and right off the bat, it started doing things I don’t like in movies, such as: • Introducing someone I thought was the main character, then killing him off within 5 minutes. • Dark and murky scenes where I can’t tell who’s who and what’s going on. • Characters talk soft and mumbly: can’t understand what they’re saying. • Confusion about who the good guys and bad guys are. • Introduction of 3 young good-looking carefree guys riding on jet skis on the ocean: I do not want to sit through a 2-hour Pepsi commercial. ...

Art report: Watercolors by John Singer Sargent Last night, I saw the John Singer Sargent watercolors exhibit at the MFA. Wow. Painting with watercolors is something like trying to sign a check with a wet mop. It’s amazing if it can be done at all, never mind done superbly, as he does. I knew Sargent mostly from his portraits, of course. Some beautiful painting there, but what always impressed me was seeing a real human being looking back at me out of the canvas. (One of my favorites: "The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit", http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/The_Daughters_of_Edward_Darley_Boit,_John_Singer_Sargent,_1882_(unfree_frame_crop).jpg ) But I had no idea the guy could paint like this. When I entered the first gallery – scenes of the canals of Venice – my jaw literally dropped. “These are *watercolors*?” I asked myself, thinking maybe they were actually oil paintings tossed in to soften us up. Then I read the description card: watercolor. I lean...

Movie report: John Carter (2012) I watched the science fiction movie “John Carter” last night. Don’t ask me why. It got terrible reviews. I guess I wanted to keep my geek credentials current. This movie reminded me of the Green Lantern movie. Not in its content, but because it had such a massive budget for special effects, yet is laid low by very simple problems that make it difficult to follow. They spent a quarter of a billion dollars making this movie. Billion, with a B. So, let’s get right to the problems, shall we? Scene 1… The first scene is of the planet Mars, with a voice telling us that this is the planet Mars, and how the evil warlike Zodanga city is pretty close to conquering the nice city of Helium, and then the entire planet. Next, we see an aerial battle between blue flying things and red flying things, where a handsome, ripped young man is desperately giving orders and his plucky crew is striving to carry them out. Yay! We want him to win! Oh, wait. He’...

Book report: Inferno, by Dan Brown I just finished reading Dan Brown’s latest novel, “Inferno.” Having previously read “The DaVinci Code,” “Angels and Demons,” and “The Lost Symbol,” I’m now prepared to formulate my Special and General Theory of Dan Brown Novels. Every Dan Brown novel since “Digital Fortress” contains the following elements: • Robert Langdon, the tall, handsome professor of art history and symbology at Harvard University. You definitely want Langdon on your team when you play Trivial Pursuit, because he knows everything about everything, which can be really handy. Whenever he speaks, it is with a smile of some kind. He is also a powerful swimmer, yet, although he’s near major bodies of water at least four times in this book, he never dives in. Also, he has probably taken a vow of celibacy, because he never ends up with the – • Beautiful, brilliant, and plucky woman who helps Langdon unravel the mystery. In “Inferno,” Brown has outdone himself in creating the e...

Movie report: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) There’s a scene in this movie where Sherlock Holmes finally meets face-to-face with his archenemy, Professor Moriarty. By this point, Moriarty has already masterminded a series of bombings across Europe that have killed hundreds and pushed the continent to the brink of a world war, as well as killing the only woman Holmes has ever cared about, and threatening Holmes’s only friend. I’m thinking it’s time for Holmes to whip out his revolver and off the scum. But no. They banter threateningly back and forth, and Holmes leaves. Huh? I mean, is he Batman or something? Has he taken a vow never to kill? Or do the moviemakers just have no clue about what an audience can and can’t reasonably swallow? I’m going with the latter, because this movie just keeps throwing things at me that I don’t want. All of the fight scenes go on for far too long, for example, as do all of the chase scenes. And there’s one inexplicable scene of Stephen ...

Book report: The Hydrogen Sonata, by Iain M. Banks Literature is people, so they say, but Iain M. Banks isn’t aware of this. Most of the characters in The Hydrogen Sonata are NOT people, but Ships, which is Banks’s shorthand for the massively smart and capable artificial intelligence units of spaceships belonging to the Culture. The Culture, in turn, is a collective of advanced (to us) civilizations that range throughout our galaxy. The civs in the Culture are post-scarcity societies, which is nice. Everybody has enough food, a place to live, and so forth. Machines do most of the work, so people are free to do pretty much whatever they want. Sounds pretty cushy, right? But even with people who have everything, there are still problems. Take the Gzilt, for example. They are an advanced civilization, on the same level as the Culture, but not a member of the Culture. They’ve all been there and done that, and now they are taking the Next Big Step: they are going to Sublime, which...

Book report: The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown I started reading Dan Brown’s “The DaVinci Code”, and really liked it, up until I found out that the big secret behind all the machinations was that Jesus was a dad (“Dad, show Jimmy that you can too walk on water!”), and his descendants (the Christs?) were still among us. I couldn’t take it seriously after that. It was as if the big secret was that the moon really was made of green cheese, and an immense conspiracy was underway by Kraft to harvest all that cheese. Sorry, I cannot suspend disbelief that much, and I’m usually a really good belief-suspender. His “Angels and Demons” was terrific, though. He actually wrote this before DaVinci Code, but when DVC became such a monster hit, A&D was rediscovered. It’s about a plot to blow up the Vatican with an anti-matter bomb, all orchestrated by a madman who also feels the need to kidnap and maim several archbishops – who are in the midst of electing a new Pope – at certain historically si...

Movie report: Man of Steel “Man of Steel” is phenomenal. The story is told non-chronologically, which took some getting used to. In fact, at one point, I thought the theater had forgotten to show an entire reel of the movie, until I figured out what was going on. They’re trying to show what it would be like for someone to have these amazing powers – and hide them desperately – and how difficult that would be. He’s trying to make sense of it all, and that means sometimes remembering what happened in the past, the good and the bad lessons growing up. Superman’s super powers have never been shown like this before. This is what it would be like to fly: the roar and buffet of the wind, the shakiness and uncertainty, the exhilaration and freedom. This is what it would be like to be invulnerable and super strong – fighting desperately against enemies who are also invulnerable and super strong – and not fighting enemies who aren’t. His heat vision is the scariest power imaginable...

Book report: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, by Sam Harris Sigh. This is yet another of those books about how great the world would be if only most of the people in it – in this case, the 5 billion or so who believe in God – didn’t exist. Let me save you a little time (and 348 pages) by summarizing his main points: 1. All religious faith is nonsense. 2. Some of it is dangerous nonsense, because it encourages people to hurt or kill people (Spanish Inquisition, suicide bombers). 3. Especially Muslims, because martyrdom and jihad are prominent parts of Islam. Luckily, he has some simple solutions to these problems: 1. Establish a world government to which all nations surrender their power. 2. Induce Muslims to reform Islam from within to remove all the violent elements. 3. Convert our societies to the use of alternative energies so that oil has no value and Muslim countries become impoverished. No, I’m not kidding. Those are his solutions. He doe...

Book report: Who’s Your Caddy? Looping for the Great, Near Great, and Reprobates of Golf, by Rick Reilly A lot of sports fans don’t care for Rick Reilly as a sports writer. He is routinely trashed by the sports talk station I listen to. But I think he is really and inventively funny. That’s what drew me to this book, even though I don’t play golf or know much about it. Reilly’s concept for this is that in no other sport can an ordinary person be so close to a star athlete while they’re actually competing as in golf, where the caddy is right near the player for the entire round. So, to see what it’s like being so up close and personal, Reilly asked many golfers if he could caddy for them for a round. Many said no, but a few said yes. This book is based on Reilly’s experiences caddying for golfers including John Daly, David Duval, Tom Lehman, Jack Nicklaus, Deepak Chopra, Donald Trump, professional gambler Dewey Tomko, Bob Newhart, Casey Martin (whose rare leg ailment allowed ...

Book report: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Jared Diamond  Having read Diamond’s phenomenal “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” I was looking forward to reading “Collapse.” GG&S was a brilliant analysis of why European and Asian societies came to dominate the rest of the world. This success was ultimately deduced from the effects of geography, with all of the logic and inevitability of the proof of a theorem in geometry. I expected the same kind of sharp analysis in Collapse, but I was very disappointed. This book is a rambling, anecdote-laden presentation of certain cherry-picked historical societies like Norse Greenland, Easter Island, the Mayans, the Anasazi, and modern Montana, where Diamond regularly vacations. His main point seems to be that societies that don’t take care of their natural resources – especially their trees – collapse, sometimes very suddenly.  Okay, certainly a good point, but one that could have been presented far more suc...