Category: movies

K2 – World’s Most Dangerous Mountain

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My original plan for 2020 would have had me hiking to K2 base camp right about now.

Oh well.

“K2 is a savage mountain that tries to kill you.”

That is how climber George Bell described the infamous peak after the first American expedition in 1953–forever giving the mountain its nickname–The Savage Mountain.

Sixty-six years later, Eddie Bauer mountain guides Adrian Ballinger and Carla Perez aim to summit the 8611-meter peak and join a community of explorers fewer in number than those who have been to outer space.

Even more incredible, they both will attempt the feat without the use of supplemental oxygen.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Love On Top (from the cast of Pitch Perfect)

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In support of UNICEF

The Bella’s are back together.

Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson, Brittany Snow, Anna Camp, Elizabeth Banks, John Michael Higgins, Alexis Knapp, Kelley Jakle, Shelley Regner, Hana Mae Lee and Chrissie Fit

Whomever did the audio and video editing is a genius.
Support/Donation Link: http://uni.cf/love-on-top
Song Buy Link: https://backlotmusic.ffm.to/loveontop

The Woman in the Window by A. J Finn

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The Woman in the Window (2018) is a thriller by the controversial Dan Mallory writing under the pen name “A. J. Finn”.

Great book.  It will keep you guessing. 

“Astounding. Thrilling. Amazing.” —Gillian Flynn

“Unputdownable.” —Stephen King

“Absolutely gripping.” —Louise Penny

Anna Fox lives alone—a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her days drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times . . . and spying on her neighbors.

Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, a mother, their teenage son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldn’t, her world begins to crumble—and its shocking secrets are laid bare.

What is real? What is imagined? Who is in danger? Who is in control? In this diabolically gripping thriller, no one—and nothing—is what it seems.

It’s going to be a great film starring Amy Adams, Gary Oldman, Anthony Mackie, Fred Hechinger, Wyatt Russell, Brian Tyree Henry, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Julianne Moore.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Patriot Games (1987) by Tom Clancy

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Famously popular at the time, I found Patriot Games in 2020 too jingoistic. Also slow paced.

It didn’t help that the audio book is read by Scott Brick, too emotional for my liking.

The origin of character Jack Ryan is interesting. A civilian history professor at the United States Naval Academy (USNA).

He’s the son of a Baltimore police detective and a nurse.

While in London with his family, Ryan stumbles upon a kidnapping attempt on the Prince of Wales and his family, which is orchestrated by Irish terrorist group …

He foils the attack by killing one gunman while injuring another and gets wounded in the process. …

Ryan is later knighted by Queen Elizabeth II …

film – You Were Never Really Here

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This is a work that will be studied by film students.

It’s excellent. Very violent, however. 

Joaquin Phoenix is the finest actor working today IMHO, now that Daniel Day-Lewis is again retired. 

You Were Never Really Here (released as A Beautiful Day in France and Germany) is a 2017 psychological thriller …

… stars Joaquin Phoenix …

… a traumatized mercenary named Joe (Phoenix) is hired by a politician to find and rescue his daughter who has been kidnapped by a human trafficking network, which Joe is instructed to destroy by any violent means. …

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

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American Dirt is a 2020 novel by American author Jeanine Cummins, about the ordeal of a Mexican woman who had to leave behind her life and escape as an undocumented immigrant to the United States with her son.

Lydia and her eight-year-old son Luca are the only survivors of the backyard barbecue massacre of her family by a drug cartel.

Her husband had been a journalist who was reporting the crimes.

Mother and son become two of the countless undocumented immigrants from Latin America who undertake the dangerous journey to the United States.

American Dirt debuted on New York Times best sellers list as the #1 on the list for the week of February 9, 2020.

The novel has been optioned for a film adaptation.

Oprah loved the book.  I’d agree.

But many, especially Mexican writers, accused the author (American, born in Spain) of exploitation and inaccuracy in her portrayals of both Mexico and the migrant experience.  A planned book tour was cancelled.

Personally, the book was insightful for me.  It’s the closest I’ve ever come to appreciating the experience of a migrant trying to cross the Mexican border illegally.

It’s fiction.  Not reality.  I understand that.

Amazon

 

 

 

The Wife Between Us (2018)

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by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen.

The Wife Between Us worked for me.  I enjoyed it, surprised by the plot twists.

Not everyone agrees.  And it is a little complicated to follow.

Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners bought the film rights so you could wait for the movie.

Richard seems the attentive, concerned husband at the start.  This is the story of the women in his life.

Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

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I’m not the target audience for this book.

Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a dystopian action-adventure novel by American author Suzanne Collins. It is a spinoff and a prequel to The Hunger Games trilogy. …

Critics had a mixed overall reception …

The central character is the teenage Coriolanus Snow who would 64 years later become the dictatorial president of Panem as Donald Sutherland.

This book didn’t really work for me.  And the 10th Hunger Games were pretty horrible.

The only character of interest is Volumnia Gaul – The Head Gamemaker of the 10th Hunger Games.

Fans of YA fiction where teens kill other teens will probably love it.

Needless to say, a film version is in the works.

Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult

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I post on Juneteenth, the day celebrating the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States.

Small Great Things (2016) was recommended for those who want to learn more about racism.

The American author, Jodi Picoult, is a white woman.

I’m a super privileged white man.

And I did learn from this book.  Especially many of the subtle instances where Black Americans are stereotyped by oblivious whites.  It made me wonder how many times I’ve done the same things.  I am often oblivious of the feelings of those around me.

The story concentrates on an African-American labor/delivery (L&D) nurse, Ruth Jefferson, in charge of newborns at a Connecticut hospital.

Ruth is ordered not to touch or go near the baby of a white supremacist couple. After the baby dies in her care, Ruth is charged with murder, and taken to court.

Small Great Things is being adapted into a film starring Viola Davis and Julia Roberts.

P.S.

I happened to have recently read a big chunk of The Innocents Abroad (1869) by Mark Twain, one of the best-selling travel books of all time.  Of course Twain was a humorist, skilled at making me laugh.

He’s an American imperialist abroad, mocking everyone and everything he finds abroad.  It was off-putting.  Later in life he became an ardent anti-imperialist.

Twain was an adamant supporter of the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of slaves, even going so far as to say, “Lincoln‘s Proclamation … not only set the black slaves free, but set the white man free also”.  Yet in his travel book you have to call him a racist.

That I found also off-putting.

The only instance of praise for anyone in the first part of the book, however, was for an African American tour guide working in Europe.  The only good guide they had in months.

The Secret Commonwealth (2019) by Philip Pullman

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Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were great friends—both Oxford writers and scholars. Both important to this day.

Philip Pullman is another Oxford man, one who believes he should be ranked with those great writers.

I wouldn’t go that far.

Certainly Lyra in The Golden Compass (also known as Northern Lights) is one of the great children characters in fiction.

Certainly Pullman’s invention of the daemon is one of the great fantasy inventions.

A film adaptation of Northern Lights, titled The Golden Compass, was released in December 2007 by New Line Cinema, starring Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra, along with Daniel Craig, Nicole Kidman, Eva Green, Sam Elliott and Ian McKellen. Though it was a financial failure, I personally like the film.

That all said, the plot of this other world is simply too scattered.  Seems he started without knowing how it would end.

Secret Commonwealth is 5th in the series, and weakest so far. 

Super fan Rine Karr posted the best review I’ve read. She was disappointed. The book is too preachy:

Racism, xenophobia, and the refugee crisis. Sexism, violence, and rape. Propaganda, the suppression of free speech, and religious fundamentalism.

Recall Pullman’s His Dark Materials series:

  1. Northern Lights (or The Golden Compass)
  2. The Subtle Knife
  3. The Amber Spyglass

His The Book of Dust series is a prequel and sequels:

  1. La Belle Sauvage (2017)
  2. The Secret Commonwealth (2019)
  3. … TBD

The Secret Commonwealth follows Lyra Silvertongue and Dr Malcolm Polstead, both at Oxford; she as an undergraduate at St Sophia’s college and he at Durham College.

It takes place twenty years after the first volume, La Belle Sauvage and seven years after the conclusion of His Dark Materials.

The setting is a world dominated by the Magisterium (commonly called “the Church”), an international theocracy which actively suppresses heresy. …

The relationship between Lyra and her dæmon, Pantalaimon, has been severely strained …

This is my least favourite of the 5 books, so far.  Too confusing.  Too random. I certainly hope book 6 wraps up Lyra’s endless and seemingly pointless journey in some satisfying way.