This guy in the office next to my cube was just talking abuut how he had seen the movie, Lions for Lambs, "It was only, like, an hour and ten munutes (Note: Actually it's 92 minutes). What a rip-off." Maybe it's the busy Dad in me but I'm thinking, "That's an awesome movie. We need more of that. Honey, let's Netflix this movie tonight, I don't care what it's about."
Seriously, it's taken me over three weeks to watch American Gangster and I still haven't finished it.
This book is a mystery set in London centered around a Ugandan-Pakistani private detective who is looking for a missing prostitute. It has a great cover.
This is one of those novels where a writer of "serious" fiction decides to slum as a mystery writer. This kind of book can work if the writer understands the mystery genre but author Patrick Neate clearly doesn't. The book is filled with numerous lengthy asides that do nothing to illuminate the plot or reveal character. The plot eventually grinds to halt at the middle when the private detective finds the woman he's been hired to find and then spends a couple of chapters getting him motivated again to solve the murder that, I guess, is at the heart of the case. I stopped reading about halfway through after the detective's father gave a lengthy biography on the terrorist who is somehow involved in the murder.
It reminded me of two other books, Like a Hole in the Head by Jennifer Banbury, another book that sought to "transcend" the mystery genre with poor results and Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers. Murder Must Advertise is a great book and has a climactic cricket scene that is one of my favorites. Oh, geez, my bad, the protagonist of City of Tiny Lights is constantly making references to cricket.
This book does raise the interesting question of what counts as consuming a book or movie. I read a little over half of this book and I think it counts but the other day I watched bits and pieces of Infamous, maybe about a third, and I don't think that counts as watching so it's not on my list of movies seen in 2008. A question for the philosophers I guess.
Well, this was a terrible movie. There was an impressive amount of irresponsible shooting, women screaming and cases of mistaken identity. Much of the dialogue goes like this:
Dempsey: What's your business, mister?
Morgan: I'm a marine painter. There's some paintings of mine behind you if you doubt it.
Dempsey: Painter, huh? Where's your palate? Kelly, see if you can find his palate.
Kelly: Open your mouth, open your mouth.
Dempsey: No! What do you think he paints, tonsils? You now an artist's palate, one of them stands they put paintings on.
Kelly: Oh, a weasel.
It's all supposed to be silly and over the top but at less then an hour it still felt stretched and forced. Here's a detailed critique and plot summary. This is the website of a Michigan band named Sh! The Octopus.
Do you know who Ryan Getzlaff, Tom Gilbert, Dion Phaneuff, Wade Redden and Stephane Robidas are? Well, neither did I but they're players on the team I just beat to win my fantasy hockey league!
I had no idea what I was doing when I started my league but I found this great site with a great draft cheat sheet and had an amazing draft. The rest is history. Hopefully, I can remember the site before next season. With a little research, the desire to have a good time and some dumb luck to can triumph. I just proved it.
Anyway, I'm thinking of buying a t-shirt to celebrate. Should it be Nicklas Lidstrom, the greatest defenseman in the word whose two power-play goals on the final day of the season put me over the top or Dominik Hasek, streaky living legend who single-handedly won my semi-final matchup and won a crucial game on the last day of the season or Niklas Backstrom, my high-scorer and a steady workhorse down the stretch?
