Like most people, I love the Bourne films, even the one without Matt Damon.
Click PLAY or watch a trailer for the first on YouTube. (2002)
I finally got around to reading the first — The Bourne Identity, a 1980 spy fiction thriller. Not good. I found the pacing WAY TOO SLOW. Every conversation far too dramatic.
I gave up around half way through.
Robert Ludlum died in 2001. But the Bourne books / films continued without him. Eric Van Lustbader now writes the sequels.
Quite good. And a big step up from the Baldacci books I’d been reading recently.
The Lincoln Lawyer is a 2005 novel, the sixteenth by American crime writer Michael Connelly. It introduces Los Angeles attorney Mickey Haller, half-brother of Connelly’s mainstay detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch. …
Moderately successful criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller operates around Los Angeles County out of a Lincoln Town Car(hence the title) driven by a former client working off his legal fees. While most clients are drug dealers and gangsters, the story focuses on an unusually important case of wealthy Los Angeles realtor Louis Roulet accused of assault and attempted murder. …
Click PLAY or watch the film trailer on YouTube.
Michael Connelly, author, thought the film loyal to the story and the character of Mickey Haller. It’s 83% on Fresh Tomatoes though I haven’t seen it yet.
Divergent (2011) is the debut novel of Veronica Roth …
The … first of the Divergent trilogy, a series of young adult dystopian novels …
The novel has been compared to other young adult books such as The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner because of its similar themes and target audience. …
I’d say Divergent is not as good as either of the other two super popular books. I won’t continue on to book 2.
Divergent the film (2014) made hundreds of millions, but is also not considered as good as the other two adaptations. I’ve not seen it.
Click PLAY or watch a trailer on YouTube.
Black Panther is the eighteenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). …
I’ve seen very few of those. Superhero films are not my thing.
Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 97% based on 374 reviews.
I’d rate it about 60%.
Not good. But it did have some very entertaining scenes. I’d compare it with Avatar in some ways … though Avatar was far better.
An excellent black cast. And … for some reason, Watson.
My favourite character by far was Shuri played by Letitia Wright. All of the badass women warriors were cool, actually.
I’ll try to avoid the many sequels yet to come.
The Book Thief is a 2005 historical novel by Australian author Markus Zusak and is his most popular work. …
I finally got around to reading this acclaimed novel.
Zusak intended it for the young adult market, yet the language is sophisticated. Almost poetic. He’s an excellent writer.
Quite original. The narrator is death.
Most people love the book but I wasn’t totally won over.
It’s about a young girl living in a small town near Munich with her adoptive German family during the Nazi era.
Taught to read by her kind-hearted foster father, the girl begins “borrowing” books and sharing them with the Jewish refugee being sheltered by her foster parents in their home …
It was adapted into a 2013 feature film of the same name. …
Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 46% …
I didn’t bother downloading.
It’s about Liesel (Sophie Nelisse), the orphaned 12-year-old daughter of German communist activists, taken in by a middle-aged couple in 1938.
She and the smitten boy next door Rudy (Nico Liersch) join the Hitler Youth and goose-step around town burning books and fetishising der Führer as little twinges of conscience and doubt slowly begin to manifest themselves.
Then her adoptive parents Hans and Rosa (Geoffrey Rush, all twinkly grandpa, and Emily Watson, super-grouchy but with a heart of gold) take in and hide the Jewish son of the man who saved Hans’s life in the Great War. …
Guardian – movie review
I loved the book Ready Player One (2011) by Ernest Cline.
The movie Ready Player One was … OK.
But I assumed Cline’s second book would be great as well.
Armada is a science fiction novel (2015) … is about a teenager who plays an online video game about defending against an alien invasion, only to find out that the game is a simulator to prepare him and people around the world for defending against an actual alien invasion.
Right away I wondered if it would be an inferior version of Ender’s Game.
It’s Ender’s Game with a twist.
Similar to Ready Player it’s about Gamer kids and retro Pop Culture. That part I liked.
Sci Fi technology I liked.
But the plot — set over one day — is stupid. Not believable in the way I found Ready Player believable.
GoodReads has it only 3.5 stars despite big hype on release. I agreed with Ariel:
Believe me when I say I was ready to love this book. Ready Player One was so great! And this was about video games and alien invasions! I jumped in to Armada ready to be caught by an awesome net..
.. and instead fell flat on my face. On concrete. And then a piano fell on me.
Read some Amazon reviews.
Skip this book. Wait for the movie.
Having not had family or friends die stupidly, needlessly in war, I’ve gotten complacent about just how horrible it can be.
The true story of Louis Zamperini should be a lesson to us all.
UNBROKEN by Laura Hillenbrand is a fantastic book.
In late May 1943, the B-24 carrying the 26-year-old Zamperini went down over the Pacific.
For nearly seven weeks — longer, Hillenbrand believes, than any other such instance in recorded history — Zamperini and his pilot managed to survive on a fragile raft. They traveled 2,000 miles, only to land in a series of Japanese prison camps, where, for the next two years, Zamperini underwent a whole new set of tortures. …
NY Times book review
Click PLAY or see the author on YouTube.
Zamperini grew up in Torrance, Calif., a juvenile delinquent saved by sport. He developed into a world-class runner who eventually competed at the 1936 Olympics where he asked Hitler for a photo.
The author believes Zamperini MIGHT have been first to break the 4 minute mile if he had had a little more time training.
The bulk of the story is two and a half years as a prisoner of war in three brutal Japanese prisoner-of-war camps.
Mutsuhiro Watanabe – nicknamed by his prisoners as “the Bird” – was the psychopath who tortured Zamperini.
Less than 2% of Americans held in German prisoner of war camps died. It was 30-40% mortality in the Japanese camps.
Right after finishing the book I watched the film. (2014)
It was produced and directed by Angelina Jolie.
The movie made money but only has 51% on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s about right. It’s OK. But don’t go out of your way to see it.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
If you read the book first, you’ll be disappointed. The story is simplified and changed because HOLLYWOOD.
I should say the actor who played The Bird — Japanese musician Miyavi — was superb. Very close to the evil devil from the book.
I loved the 2011 LitRPG science fiction debut novel of American author Ernest Cline. …
A film adaptation, screenwritten by Cline and Zak Penn and directed by Steven Spielberg, was released on March 29, 2018.
Could Spielberg do justice to the book on film?
Click PLAY or watch a trailer on YouTube.
I saw it on the big screen.
Cheesy. But a good effort, I thought.
Many, many changes were made for the film because HOLLYWOOD. But I was OK with them.
Rotten Tomatoes has it at 73%. That’s about right. It’s OK … but not a must see.
If you are any kind of GAMER, do see it.
The book is excellent. Especially entertaining you were alive in the 1980s to appreciate all the Pop Culture references.
A book sequel is in the works.
The Swing Youth (German: Swingjugend) were a group of jazz and swing lovers in Germany in the 1930s, mainly in Hamburg and Berlin. …
… composed of 14 to 21-year-old boys and girls in high school, most of them middle- or upper-class students …
They admired the British and American way of life, defining themselves in swing music and opposing the National-Socialist ideology, especially the Hitler Youth …
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube. (Hollywood adaptation)
Here are a couple of historical photos.
Like pretty much everyone, I loved it.
I’ve always been a sucker for Holy Hunter.
The Big Sick is a 2017 American romantic comedy … written by Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani.
Loosely based on the real-life romance between Nanjiani and Gordon, it follows an interracial couple who must deal with cultural differences after Emily (played by Kazan in the film) becomes ill. …
It became one of the most acclaimed films of 2017 …
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 98% …
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Rick McCharles 