Songs of Eastern Birds by Donald J. BorrorMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
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Wednesday, March 22, 2023
Tuesday, March 21, 2023
Review: Easy Street: The Hard Way
Easy Street: The Hard Way by Ron PerlmanMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
With a lot of candor, humility, and reflection Perlman walks us through a career starting in un(der)paid New York stage to a big jump up with a screen roles in Quest for Fire the tumble down from this to no work and the turkey Ice Pirates. Things turned around in a big way for him with The Name of the Rose ( stories about meeting and working with Sean Connery and Christian Slater and another step up came with Beauty and the Beast. Thus, insights into Linda Hamilton and interactions with series fan Sinatra. There's a lot about working with Brando in The Island of Dr. Moreau. It can get kinda lost if you don't take in the final pages, but the ultimately successful Hellboy and Sons of Anarchy star launched a production company Wing and a Prayer Pictures with an agenda of old school filmcraft decent to everyone down to the sweepers that he sells with earnest commitment here and seems to have persisted as a going concern for about five years.
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Monday, March 20, 2023
Friday, March 17, 2023
Review: A Tale of Two Cities
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles DickensMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
First of all, kudos to Borders for a beautifully designed paperback edition with deckle edges and a heavy-duty cover with flaps usable for bookmarks, like a dust jacket on a hardcover.
Now, as for the content, this is what I want when I read other Dickens title: evocative description and metaphor, but with an economy unlike the over-writing I feel I encounter in his other novels. The setting from an American Revolutionary War espionage trial to the rapine of the freely wielded guillotine in a much bloodier revolution in France is recalls a fascinating era with as much of a sociological dimension to consider as The Holocaust: That happened.
I am not as much sold on the plot. I think the villainy of the Marquis St. Evrémonde, the cruel uncle of the heroic Charles Darnay, rather gets lots in this inter-generational and inter-continental tale. (I think Wuthering Heights does a better job with the decades of dastardly deeds perpetrated on a family by Heathcliff.) While on film he has been played by several actors and the Basil Rathbone portrayal of St. Evrémonde was nominated for AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains as one of the Top 50 Villains I think it can be argued that the film portrayals much more "cut to the chase" than the book.
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Thursday, March 16, 2023
Friday, March 10, 2023
Thursday, March 9, 2023
Monday, March 6, 2023
Saturday, March 4, 2023
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