Movie Review- Man of Steel

Man of Steel

Loved it. Great story and acting. Going into the movie I had seen pictures of Henry Cavill who plays Superman during the movie's publicity tour and I wasn't sold. I was wrong, Cavill did an amazing job with the perfect happy medium between Christopher Reeves and Tom Welling. I'd also heard that the chemistry between him and Amy Adams playing Lois Lane wasn't great and that is a fairer criticism. I thought she did an ok job but she could have played it with more attitude and the romance could have been a lot better. She's gorgeous and the romance wasn't as important as some of her other scenes so I thought she did well overall. Personally I thought the two best performances in the movie were by Michael Shannon who played General Zod and Russell Crowe who played Superman's father Jor-El. Michael Shannon in particular really stole the show for me, he was absolutely brilliant. I was also glad that the story was so good and dark. Lately with a lot of the reboot movies I've been a little bored by the origin's story but this movie handled that really well starting off with Clark as a young adult and covering his childhood through a few well done flash backs. Really enjoyable move and highly recommended!

Movie Review- World War Z

World War Z

I went to see the movie as a Sunday matinee after finally starting to feel better from a brutal hangover on Saturday. I'd read the book and thought the previews looked really good. Brad Pitt's an actor I like and the zombie effects looked pretty cool. The movie itself just didn't really perform, they did an ok job building tension and it was really cool when the zombies swarmed but overall it never really came together and the last quarter of the movie was pretty boring. I also had a really hard time with the camera constantly jumping around, I was feeling about 95% better but left the movies really nauseous again. Nausea aside, I think the real issues with the movie were not developing characters outside of Pitt's and the story seemed rushed and unorganized. A friend said they could have added 30 minutes and really tied it together a lot better. Ultimately I have to agree. Cool special effects does not make the movie.

Audio book- Needful Things written and read by Stephen King

Audio book Needful Things written and read by Stephen King


This is the second book I've listen to by Stephen King that he also read and it was another amazing experience. I couldn't stop listening to it and listened to all 250 hours in a little over a week. The story itself is about a nefarious shopkeeper who opens a shop in Western Maine and almost immediately starts trouble by escalating longstanding small town feuds. I'm not sure I would have liked the book as much as I did if I wasn't one of King's constand readers. Castle Rock has been featured prominently in a lot of his other works, the main protagonist Alan Pangborn was awesome in The Dark Half and there's a strong tie in to the Dark Tower series at the end of the book. It was nice to revisit old friends and familiar places but the key to me was the Dark Tower tie in at climax. I won't ruin it but I'm not sure I wouldn have completely understood it if I wasn't aware of King's the world outside of this book. That being said, this book is still excellent on it's own but if someone wanted to listen to one of King's books and haven't read much of his catolog I'd recommend starting with Bag of Bones because while there are still tie in's they're not really all that important and you'd still get to enjoy listing to King read his own work.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Summer finally showing up in Maine was the perfect time to read a good mystery and this one comes highly rated being included on just about every best books of 2012 list. Obviously I had high hopes when I started reading and to me the book left me unsatisfied. In order to avoid spoilers I won't get into too many plot specifics but overall I didn't like either of the 2 main characters, the plot twist was good but too early in the book and then the psychology for behind the ending had me rolling my eyes. I don't expect the plot complexities or prose in literary fiction but I just can't believe how flawed the plot feels to me looking back. Can't say I'd recommend the book and am a little baffled about why it was so highly lauded. Good but far from great.

Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson

Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson

Crazy collection of short stories and I mean that in the best way.  The stories all revolve around some bad men all drug addicts, alcoholics or both.  Quite a few of the stories have been heavily anthologized so I'd already read Car Crash While Hitchhiking, Two Men & Emergency and love all three.  Two Men in particular is one of my all time favorite short stories and the rest of the collection holds up just as well.  I wouldn't want to be friends with any of these guys but it was a great sneak peak into that seedy underbelly of society and he brings some unexpected light into that world.  For example the last story in the collection, Beverly Home shows some real unexpected tenderness in a story told from the point of view of a drug addict and peeping tom.  It was a great way to finish the book as it leaves you with a weird, wonderful feeling and like the rest of the collection you have a lot of mixed emotions about the characters.

Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut

Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut

As is well documented, I'm a huge Kurt Vonnegut fan so I was excited to read the last book he published when he was still alive.  It's kind of an odd book with a mix of fiction and semi biographical material that somehow works really well.  The story is about a timequake that everyone including his long time character Kilgore Trout and him are sent back 10 years in 2001 to 1991 where everyone has to do everything exactly the same because it's already happened.  This is sprinkled in with a lot of rants that are true to form with Kurt's signature dark whit and insight.  I think I highlighted more passages out of this short books than the last 10 I've read put together.  He was an absolute genius.