Nicholas Bruner's Blog, page 14

Ranking the Twilight Zone

I’m watching all the Twilight Zone episodes (that I have on disk) with my daughter and ranking them. We watched two episodes this time and, as ever, I’m running them through a rubric to give them a score from 0 to 7. The episodes are graded in three categories: Concept/Plot/Characters (4 points), Tone (1 point), and The Twist (2 points).

The episodes this time were both from Volume 41 of the DVDs.

Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up? (Season Two, 1961)
Two state troopers are at the sid...

What I’m Reading: Eleanor & Park

Eleanor & Park, by Rainbow Rowell, is a 2013 YA novel about, as you might guess, two characters named Eleanor and Park, who seem at first to have little in common but end up meaning everything to each other.

It’s 1986, and Eleanor has just returned home after being kicked out of her house for a year by her drunkard stepfather, Richie. She’s been living with her aunt and uncle but Richie’s decided to let her move back in. She’s not sure why Richie had a change of heart, but she knows she’s pus...

What I’m Reading: Warships of the Ancient World

This book is part of the research I’m doing for the fantasy trilogy I’m currently writing. It’s pretty straightforward–Warships of the Ancient World: 3000-500 BC, by Adrian K. Wood, gives you exactly what it says in the title. It covers every aspect of warships built by the ancient Egyptians, Cretans, Assyrians, and Phoenicians. In the final section, it presents Greece on the cusp between the Bronze and Iron ages, from Homeric times through to the very edge of the classical era.

It’s packed f...

Ranking the Twilight Zone

I’m watching all the Twilight Zone episodes (that I have on disk) with my daughter and ranking them. We watched three episodes this time and, as ever, I’m running them through a rubric to give them a score from 0 to 7. The episodes are graded in three categories: Concept/Plot/Characters (4 points), Tone (1 point), and The Twist (2 points).

The episodes this time were all from Volume 22 of the DVDs.

Back There (Season Two, 1961)
This episode is one of my personal favorites. Nonetheless, I w...

What I’m Reading: The Old Ball Game

The Old Ball Game, by Frank Deford, is actually a re-read for me. I read it when it first came out in 2005 and remembered it as a delightful and informative book about the New York Giants in the early 1900s, focusing on their manager, John McGraw, and their star pitcher, Christy Mathewson. But after I read Where They Ain’t, by Burt Solomon, a couple years ago, which is about the 1890s Baltimore Orioles and their star player John McGraw, I wanted to come back to this one. Indeed, the two books ma...

Scary Movies: Tremors

My son was really interested in watching this scary movie, billed on Starz as being an action-comedy-horror, so I agreed to watch it with him. I think it’s indicative of the quality of the movie that I realized about ten minutes into it that I’d seen Tremors before. In fact, I think I may have seen it in the theaters when it came out back in 1990, and hadn’t thought of the movie for one minute since then. Not that the movie’s terrible, just kind of forgettable.

Val (played by Kevin Bacon!) an...

Ranking the Twilight Zone

I’m watching all the Twilight Zone episodes (that I have on disk) with my daughter and ranking them. We watched three episodes this time and, as ever, I’m running them through a rubric to give them a score from 0 to 7. The episodes are graded in three categories: Concept/Plot/Characters (4 points), Tone (1 point), and The Twist (2 points).

The episodes this time were from Volumes 8 and 22 of the DVDs. My daughter and I have now rated 30 episodes, and as the reviews below attest, it shows. Epi...

What I’m Reading: The Workshop and the World

The Workshop and the World, by Robert P. Crease, is two books in one: a collection of biographies of important thinkers in history who contributed to what he terms the “scientific workshop,” by which he means the overall structure and authority of the scientific establishment, and a passionate but (I think) ultimately frustrating and unsuccessful polemic against what Crease calls science denial.

The two goals of the book are really intertwined. Crease believes that we live in an age of increa...

Ranking the Twilight Zone

I’m watching all the Twilight Zone episodes (that I have on disk) with my daughter and ranking them. We watched three episodes this time and, as ever, I’m running them through a rubric to give them a score from 0 to 7. The episodes are graded in three categories: Concept/Plot/Characters (4 points), Tone (1 point), and The Twist (2 points).

The episodes this time were all from Volumes 8 and 43 of the DVDs, and are a nice mix.

A World of His Own (Season One, 1960)
This episode is quite amusin...

What I’m Reading: The Stuarts

The Stuarts, by J.P. Kenyon, is a history covering the Stuarts, who became English ruling family after Elizabeth I of the Tudor dynasty died without an heir in 1603. The monarchs are James I (1603-25), Charles I (1625-49, and beheaded at the end of his reign), an interruption for the English Civil War and a brief republic, Charles II (1660-85), James II (1685-88), the co-monarchs William III (1689-1702) and Mary II (1689-94), and finally, Anne (1702-1714).

I must say, I did not especially ca...