August Books and Movies
Wow, pretty light month for me. I spent a lot of time sewing instead.
:)
Finding magic, Tanya Huff.
A short story collection from one of my favourite authors.
Includes works that she's written for other universes (including
her Valdemar short stories), as well as snippets of her SF and
fantasy universes. Some interesting takes on women being a subtle
power for good. I'm not sure if I'd recommend the collection as a
place to start with her, but it was fun to read having read almost
all of her other works. Aug 5/10
Blood Bank, Tanya Huff.
Finding Magic mentioned a couple of the stories in here and
I made the mistake of picking it up to remind myself what they were
about and ended up re-reading everything except the one that I'd
also read in another anthology. This is a short story collection
that goes with her Blood novels, telling more stories of Vicki as a
vampire. Aug 6/10
The living dead, edited by John Joseph Adams.
Finished while lying on a chaise lounge in the courtyard at
Treasure Mountain Inn. :) Zombie stories, almost all collected
from other anthologies, which seemed a bit odd/disappointing.
They're mostly good and the first one stuck in my mind, of an
elderly elementary school teacher who's holding her school
against the zombie hordes (it made me tear up a bit). The
zombies are off all types, one offs, hordes, curses,
scientifically engineered, and all deal with how the living deal
with the dead. August 14/10
Clementine, Cherie Priest. Set in the same world as
"Boneshaker", this novel follows an air pirate trying to get his
rightfully stolen airship back and the female Pinkerton agent who's
trying to make sure that the stolen air ship gets to it's destination.
I liked the interplay between the two main characters, they're both
strong willed but open minded enough to negotiate when it's to their
advantage to work together. A decent amount of ship to ship battles,
but it is a short work and I was left wanting more. Aug
21/10
Naamah's Curse, Jacqueline Carey.
Yay for being back to a book that makes me stay up too late reading.
:) Moirin is off in search of Bao, heading into the wild Tartar lands
as winter approaches. Her journey doesn't end there as they find and
lose each other and she encounters some bad people and some very good
people. Her gods and others are working in and through her and her
path isn't easy. Aug 31/10
Movies:
Vengeance. Johnnie To's 2010 movie was playing at the
Brattle and I made a point of going over to see it on one of the two
nights it was showing. I love that he reuses actors, though they tend
to just be cast as variations on "gangster" - but they do it so well,
I'm not complaining. I love how much these movies can say with very
little dialogue, the chemistry between the actors is great. It was
interesting to see a flashier side of Macau, "Exiled" was much
grittier. In this movie, a family is gunned down as they're about to
sit down for supper, the wife and mother is the only survivor and
she's seriously injured. Her father comes over from France and is a
fish out of water as he tries to exact vengeance for his daughter's
family. He stumbles across a trio of gangsters pulling a hit in his
hotel and manages to hire them to help him. There's quite a bit of
dark humour, and samples of the daily life of Triad members (the
picnic scene was perfect), as well as rich heapings of pathos as the
father tries to hold it together in the face of an old injury.
Conflicting loyalties, family ties, memories all weave through the
plot. It's not a perfect movie, but I loved it. Aug 20/10
Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead. I don't know
if I even want to admit/remember that I watched this. It was bad.
Really bad. Racist, sexist, badly acted, more holes than plot, stupid,
truly disgusting, and even the fake vomit wasn't real enough to make
me queasy. And this is coming from someone who *likes* B movies. This
was an F. Skip. Avoid. Burn any copies you see. Don't even try to
watch it just to say that you did, it's not worth the mental scarring.
About the only redeeming feature is that the guy in a wheelchair isn't
given any special treatment. Aug 25/10