Category: books

World War Z | White House Down | Superman

On By Rick McIn books, moviesLeave a comment

I rarely see first run movies in the cinema. Especially Hollywood summer blockbusters.

But somehow I saw these three current hits.

TOP 5 USA Friday June 28, 2013:

1. The Heat (Fox) NEW [Runs 3,181] R
Estimated Friday $13M-$16M, Est Weekend $35M-$30M

2. Monsters University 3D (Pixar/Disney) Week 2 [Runs 4,004] G
Estimated Friday $13M-$16M, Est Weekend $45M-$55M, Est Cume $170M-$180M

3. World War Z 3D (Paramount) Week 2 [Runs 3,607] PG13
Estimated Friday $10M-$12M (-60%), Est Weekend $33M-$36M, Est Cume $127M-$130M

4. White House Down (Sony) NEW [Runs 3,222]
Estimated Friday $9M-11M, Est Weekend $25M-$30M

5. Man Of Steel 3D (:legendary/Warner Bros) Week 3 [Runs 4,131]
Estimated Friday $6M-$9M, Weekend $19M-$25M, Est Cume $247M-$232M

I enjoyed all three, plotless and absurd as they are. Jamie Foxx as President?

Best was World War Z. Brad Pitt works for me.

world-war-z-first-trailer1

The zombie CGI are excellent. Actually, I saw it in 3D. Don’t bother. I can’t say the 3D improved the film.

I’m looking forward to the inevitable WW Z sequel(s). And will likely get the book, which I hear is far better.

Atheist in the FOXhole

On By Rick McIn books, government, humour1 Comment

With glee I instantly bought the new FOX News expose (as an audio book) by Joe Mudo.

… Then made the trip to Manhattan to confront the biggest FOX star himself, Papa Bear.

Papa Bear Rick

Like Colbert, I’m a HUGE fan of mocking Bill O’Reilly.

Release date: June 4, 2013 – An Atheist in the FOXhole:

The “Fox Mole”—whose dispatches for Gawker made headlines in Businessweek, The Hollywood Reporter, and even on The New York Times website—delivers a funny, opinionated memoir of his eight years at the unfair, unbalanced Fox News Channel working as an associate producer for Bill O’Reilly.

Imagine needing to hide your true beliefs just to keep a job you hated. Now imagine your job was producing the biggest show on the biggest cable news channel in America, and you’ll get a sense of what life was like for Joe Muto. As a self-professed bleeding-heart, godless liberal, Joe’s viewpoints clearly didn’t mesh with his employer—especially his direct supervisor, Bill O’Reilly. …

FOXholes

An Atheist in the FOXhole: A Liberal’s Eight-Year Odyssey Inside the Heart of the Right-Wing Media

Sadly, I didn’t learn much from the book.

FOX News is no villain, merely a highly successful, insanely profitable business.

Boss hog Rupert Murdoch is just as happy with FOX News dollars, as he is with profits from The Simpsons and Modern Family, both FOX business products.

Joe Mudo concludes the book predictably …

If FOX News would only concede that they mainly take a right wing point-of-view, we’d have nothing to complain about.

EVERYONE — EVERYONE — knows that “Fair and Balanced” is a motto that can only be taken ironically by any thinking human being.

Only the blind take that motto literally.

Joe confirms that O’Reilly is more about high ratings than Conservative “idiocracy“. 🙂

Bill went rogue in 2008, backing President Bush’s massive Bank bailout.

More recently …

Bill O’Reilly marched into the mother of all battles against the forces of intolerance, and it hasn’t nearly ended. He said that gays are winning the battle over marriage because they have “the compelling argument,” and that those opposed to gay marriage need to come up with an actual argument rather than just “thump the Bible.”

This erupted into in a made-for-YouTube shouting match with Laura Ingraham, which O’Reilly happily hosted on his Fox show …

HuffPo

Dr. Laura is worst of the worst. Still.

Even the truly mentally ill FOX host Glenn Beck is back-pedalling on Gay marriage.

Astonishingly, it turns out that Ann Coulter is no she demon, but — in real life — a likeable and charming woman.

O’Reilly impressed me, overall, in the book. Sarah Palin comes off worst.

You can skip this book. Any episode of Jon Stewart or Colbert will tell you as much as you need to know about FOX National News.

The local news affiliates are quite good, so far as I can tell.

Red Planet Blues

On By Rick McIn booksLeave a comment

I buy and read every new Robert Sawyer book. He’s one of my favourite authors.

His latest (very popular) book is called Red Planet Blues. A futuristic detective novel.

The book is set on a future Mars, where a town called New Klondike thrives under a climate-controlled dome. Most of its citizens were lured by the promise of the Great Martian Fossil Rush, a craze begun when two explorers found remnants of early life forms on Mars, which prove to be exceedingly valuable at home on Earth.

But like the gold rush that populated our terrestrial Klondike, the Martian Fossil Rush hasn’t turned out to be endlessly lucrative. New Klondike is now a boom town gone bust …

At its best, Sawyer’s fiction is a fascinating blend of intellectually compelling big ideas and humane, enduring characters. His recent WWW Trilogy, in which the World Wide Web gains consciousness as an intelligence called Webmind and communicates with Caitlin Decter, the teenage daughter of a professor at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ont., is one of the most satisfying fictional thought experiments of recent years. He is capable of great empathy and insight, which is what makes Red Planet Blues so disappointing. …

Globe and Mail review – … noir fiction on the red planet, but it loses its orbit

I agree with that review. This is a good book, not not nearly Robert’s best.

Fantastic setting. Great speculative science fiction. But the plot is far too intricate. I didn’t empathize much with any of the characters.

If you are looking for a good book series this summer, read Wake, Watch, Wonder instead.

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David Foster Wallace – THIS IS WATER

On By Rick McIn books, education, philosophy2 Comments

Brilliant.

In 2005, author David Foster Wallace was asked to give the commencement address to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College.

However, the resulting speech didn’t become widely known until 3 years later, after his tragic death. It is, without a doubt, some of the best life advice we’ve ever come across, and perhaps the most simple and elegant explanation of the real value of education.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

We made this video, built around an abridged version of the original audio recording, with the hopes that the core message of the speech could reach a wider audience who might not have otherwise been interested. However, we encourage everyone to seek out the full speech (because, in this case, the book is definitely better than the movie).

-The Glossary

It’s no finger wagging Dr Laura sermon. 🙂

Here’s the full speech.

David Foster Wallace committed suicide September 12, 2008. He had suffered depression for over 20 years.

Dan and Audrey. RTW travel.

On By Rick McIn books, movies, travelLeave a comment

Warren recommended a travel blog called Uncornered Market.

south african kids

Check a sample – South Africa: From in the Books to on the Ground

Daniel Noll & Audrey Scott are the husband-and-wife storytelling and photography team behind Uncornered Market. They travel deep and off-beat, aiming to connect the world through people, food and adventure. Six years and 75 countries later, they are still going…and still married …

I’m looking at a couple of future Round The World trips right now.

reading PDFs on an iPad mini

On By Rick McIn Apple, audiocasts, booksLeave a comment

I’ve pretty much given up reading long form, preferring aural. Audio books. Audiocasts.

But when I had an original screenplay to review, I tried reading it on iPad.

Seems iBooks is the best app.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Why don’t apps have a required HELP function?

I had to experiment to discover the various swipe functions for navigation.

Anyway … it worked great. I may try an entire book on Mini next.

related – I get the entire issue of Economist magazine in audio podcast format. Weekly. Free.

Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee

On By Rick McIn books, ethicsLeave a comment

Disgrace is a novel by J. M. Coetzee, published in 1999. It won the Booker Prize. The writer was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature four years after its publication.

David Lurie is a South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his good looks, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his own daughter. …

His “disgrace” comes when he almost forcibly seduces one of his more vulnerable students which is thereafter revealed to the school and a committee is convened to pass judgement on his actions. David refuses to apologize in any sincere form and so is forced to resign from his post. …

… he takes refuge on his daughter’s farm in the Eastern Cape. For a time, his daughter’s influence and natural rhythms of the farm promise to harmonise his discordant life. But the balance of power in the country is shifting. Shortly after becoming comfortable with rural life, he is forced to come to terms with the aftermath of an attack on the farm in which his daughter is raped and impregnated and he is violently assaulted. …

disgrace

Dark.

Thought provoking.

Very well written.

Fast paced, succinct and compelling to read.

I wouldn’t recommend you read it, however. Pick a more uplifting book.

The Power of One, perhaps.

related – The film Disgrace, starring John Malkovich as the professor, premiered at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, where it was awarded the Prize of the International Critics.

Roger Ebert on travel

On By Rick McIn books, travelLeave a comment

I came across a statistic the other day that claimed only about ten percent of Americans have traveled outside their country. There is no reason for this. The recession is not an explanation …

… I count among my friends the most-traveled man in history, Paul Theroux. Not only has he written many wonderful novels and short stories, but a shelf of travel books. …

He is the most widely-read man I know, and he suffers my company because I have heard of Mrs. Gaskell and Oliver Onions, and I share his opinion that for a book to read on a journey, nobody beats Simenon.

I told him one quiet afternoon that with his eyes he had seen more of the surface of the earth at ground level than any other man had, and any other man ever would. He said he had never thought of it that way. …

Has travel broadened him? He says not. He is rather notorious for having written, “Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation; and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.” …

Why then, does Theroux travel? “The greatest justification for travel,” he wrote in Dark Star Safari, “is not self-improvement but rather performing a vanishing act, disappearing without a trace. …

A slow boat to anywhere (2009)

I rather doubt that Theroux, one of my favourite writers, is the most traveled man. But he’s up there.

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Life of Pi

On By Rick McIn books, moviesLeave a comment

Great book.

And a remarkably skillful film adaption by Ang Lee.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave Life of Pi 4 out of 4 stars, referring to it as “a miraculous achievement of storytelling and a landmark of visual mastery” as well as “one of the best films of the year.” He particularly praised the film’s use of 3D that he described as “deepen[ing] the film’s sense of places and events.”

I was enthralled the entire time. The CGI didn’t bother me even once.

Hoping to see it again, but next time in 3D. 🙂

your life story in print – $1350

On By Rick McIn books, friendsLeave a comment

Anne Farries will interview you — or more likely one of your parents or grandparents — and write up a biography. And print 6 copies.

Great idea. 🙂

confidentialinquiries (a) farriesbiographies.ca
1-855-756-9185

Details on her new website – FarriesBiographies.ca

Farries

I see she’s already got the cover photo for my own life story. 🙂