This was a really fantastic documentary about American debt, both personal and national, and how corporations prey on the most disadvantaged members of society.
Disturbing, but really entertaining, it was so so well done, I watched it twice. Seriously, as soon as it was over, I watched the special features, and then went right back and watched the whole thing over again, it was that good. I even tried to talk Mr. Lexacat into watching it when he got home at midnight, and would have happily watched it again with him, but he wasn't into it.
So, it was that good. Yup.
Oh, lovely! I actually got all choked up at the end. These were so good.
Fun and frothy YA. Teen movie star Kaitlin Burke is back at work, after her self-imposed exile of the first book, Secrets of My Hollywood Life. On set, her sleazy ex, Drew, and her arch nemesis Skye are causing trouble, and at home, her mother has taken to wearing Seven jeans and hanging out with "Lynne" and "Dina", which is kind of funny. I don't know, it's not great lit, obvs, but fun and kind of refreshing.
I feel like I am probably among the very last people to see this who ever had any interest at all in seeing it, but I finally got to it!
Despite A Very Trusted Source (Hi Mom!) seeing it earlier in the week and pronouncing it "utter slop" I gave it a shot anyway.
It might be because of major sleep deprivation, but I thought it was sweet- definitely sappy, sentimental, string-pulling like a bloody ocean-casting fishing line, but still cute. Very much a Hey-It's-That-Guy movie for me- I kept losing track of the plot trying to figure out which other English romantic comedies I'd seen all the actors in, but maybe that helped with some of the admittedly goofy plotlines?
Still, a feel-good movie, and those are pretty rare, I reckon.
Did I mention sleep deprived?
Well, this was nowhere nearly as good as the other Nancy Drew themed adult fiction I read this week, I'll tell you that much.
Maybe it suffered by comparison, but, it is a Red Dress book, which usually bodes pretty ill of a title.
Um- cross Jane Eyre with Nancy Drew and a smidge of Ian Fleming-lite with a twist of Mary Poppins, and you would have this steaming pile of nonsense.
Yup. Awful. The only thing that came close to redeeming it is that there was blessedly little talk of shoes.
Nifty book with (mostly) green ideas for kid's crafts. Nicely done.
Nothing really, new, if fact, I definitely remember Martha Stewart hammering ferns onto napkins, but well done, beautifully illutrated, and a great resource.
Well, I guess it's been a while since I read any YA, and this was awful.
Fish out of water story- Nikki Olivetti is a nouveau riche Long Island girl who gets sent to exclusive Wellington boarding school, where her roomate is field hockey star Laine Hunt.
blah blah blah.
Wow.
This was a major book, and one that I had to read and absorb slowly, and with much pondering.
Klein argues that Milton Friedman's economic theories, as embodied by the Chicago School of thought, have created a disturbing situation where governments led by true believers not only use psychologically traumatic incidents as opportunities to force economic change into a desired area, but will also create such incidents intentionally.
From Latin and South American government overthrows to 1950's shock treatments designed to "wipe clean" a persons personality, to torture at Abu Ghraib to the land grabs after the South Asian tsunami to everything in post-Katrina New Orleans, this book argued persuasively that many of these things didn't just happen, that they were purposeful and resulted in major wealth creation for interested parties.
The war profiteers...
Read this book. Really.
This was so strange and great, and so surprising.
I found this book because Chelsea Cain is now writing very gory sounding thrillers, which are getting great reviews- Sweetheart, and Heartsick, which are being so widely praised that I was curious about the author. I know they'll be too beastly for me to read- anything with a character that gets compared to Hannibal Lecter is out of my flavor, but still, I thought I'd try to see where this Chelsea Cain came from.
Imagine my surprise when this popped up.
In this ridiculously well done piece of wierdness, Nancy Drew is a real person, still angry at her old college roommate Carolyn Keene for stealing and distorting Nancy's stories about her teen sleuth experiences. She marries Ned Nickerson, but always has a burning flame for hunky Frank Hardy. Bess is so traumatized by Carolyn's always calling her plump that she's anorexic, and George has a great roommate, V., who enjoys herbal tea.
Cherry Ames and Vicky Barr are there, and Flossie Bobbsey is an international birth control advocate. Encyclopedia Brown is pudgy, middle aged, and wears bright swimshorts. It was all hallucinatory and wonderful.
One of the strangest things I've ever read, but so much fun.
This was intense, and disturbing. 12 year old Lola is a Brearly student, living in NYC with her parents, and by the end of the book, she has changed into a wild survivalist.
I've read a lot of dystopian near-future fic, and this felt chillingly possible. The assasinations, the riots, the fires in California, the National Guard and the Xanax, all seen through the eyes of a girl who (occasionally) studies for chemistry and is struggling through Tess of the D'Urbervilles...
Intense. I hadn't heard of it until I read a Boing Boing post asking why this book wasn't better known, and I agree- it should be.
Fantastic documentary.
This was just so good. A well paced, brilliantly done look at America's military industrial complex, and the way industry has affected foreign policy.
I wept, watching this, it was that well done.
Best movie I've seen all year. This was fantastic, enlightening, interesting, and so so damn good.
Everyone should see this.
Even the fantastic Mandy Moore couldn't save this tripe.This was terrible, despite a really good beginning.
Anna Foster is the 18 year old daughter of the US President, and after having her few dates ruined by the constant presence of the Secret Service, she gets her parents to promise that while in France on a state visit, she will be allowed to attend a concert with her friend, the French President's daughter, and only 2 Secret Service agents.
Of course Daddy lied, and a fiasco ensues, and Anna goes on the run.
That's when the whole thing took a terrible turn.
Despite being filmed in Paris, Prague, Venice and Berlin, the movie only offered the most cartoonish American stereotypes of the people and places. There's a sentimental gondolier, a hunky giant blond German, a goofball Aussie pickpocket, the French girl is hot and loose, and so on. It was awful.
The love story was such nonsense I can't even say anything beyond that- except that it was offensively misogynistic.
Oh, Mandy Moore, don't do this to me! You and Toni Colette should run off and make a really great movie. You deserve it after this garbage.
This was remarkable, like moving art. No dialogue, but the most extraordinary images, pieced together to show our planet. Really incredible. Score by Phillip Glass.
This was good, despite an awful premise. I think Wickham/Kinsella is a really good writer who just hasn't found her real topics yet- although with the sacks of money she must be making off the Shopaholic books, I guess she doesn't need to strive away at lit fic anymore. It's just even in the really not-so-good books of hers that seem to be being re-released with covers that scream out Sophie Kinsella- author of Shopaholic! she has a good voice, and nice details, and great style.
Cool, quick read.
A climatological world history, with well-explained science and really well done scenes set in the different civilizations which were impacted by the warm period from about 1000 AD to 1300 AD.
I also just read another book by the same author, The Little Ice Age, which was also really enjoyable- readable, but still with a real backbone.
This one was was set in Swansea, for a change!
Hate the thought of what the foot and mouth outbreaks might have done to the sheep in Wales.
Yup- another one. Getting a bit sick of these, actually. Almost done with the series, though.
Well, Since all I've ever heard was that this was a funny movie, I kind of thought it would be, but, no.
Once again, Toni Colette was wonderful, but overall, the movie was strange and sad. Maybe Australians have different senses of humor?
Depressing as hell, actually.
Pretty great documentary about the 60's student radicals. After seeing Across The Universe, I thought I'd check this out, and was glad I did.
Domestic terrorism (Oklahoma City, Atlanta Olympics, Ted Kaczynski, etc.) has really kind of fallen off the radar since 9/11, but it is so much more interesting and complicated than the easy-to-understand rage that so many people across the world feel towards America.
When Americans themselves feel that our nation has gone so far off track that they turn to violence, there's usually something pretty damn intense going on, and the Weather Underground was certainly an intense movement.
I wish there had been a little more reflection, but the movie would have been too long then, and just telling the story of some college students who chose to leave their lives behind and risk their lives and freedom to fight for causes they believed in was well worth it.
I am always so impressed by anyone who believes in anything. I don't know how they do it.
Tasty little morsel, but I'm starting to think that Rhys Bowen has a bee in his/her bonnet about Druids.
hilling.
