Jaq Greenspon's Blog, page 59
February 15, 2015
Review: Jupiter Ascending
I admit it. I walked into the theatre completely biased. I was not expecting to like this film. Honestly, I haven’t really liked a Wachowski (Andy��and��Lana) film since the first��Matrix��film and I still think their best film is��Bound. I think their visual style is impressive though, even if I don’t like their story-telling (In this […]
February 11, 2015
Review: Detective Strongoak and the Case of the Dead Elf
Detective Strongoak and the Case of the Dead Elf by Terry Newman My rating: 3 of 5 stars Former guard turned PI Nicely Strongoak is a dwarf in an elf’s world. Okay, not just elves. There’s also imps, ogres, tree folk, goblins, humans and various other high fantasy book mainstays. As the book opens, Nicely […]
February 8, 2015
Review: Theory of Everything
Since it’s release stateside I’ve been hearing good and bad about��The Theory of Everything, the biopic about cosmologist Stephen Hawking. The conversations about the film increased when the Academy Award nominations were announced and the film took several spots, including a nod for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Music and two for the lead […]
February 5, 2015
That felt good!
For the first time in about 4 years, I finished a piece of short fiction which doesn’t have a definitive market or deadline. This one was just for me. It deals with Lithuanian mythology and cultural bits, something else I’ve attempted a few times but never got further than a couple paragraphs in. The first […]
February 4, 2015
Review: Kindred
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler My rating: 5 of 5 stars Incredibly powerful piece. Seriously. Octavia Butler has crafted an amazing novel which is nominally science fiction but at the same time is a historical drama as well as a slave narrative. Written in 1976, the story follows an African American woman named Dana who […]
February 1, 2015
Review: Jodorowsky’s Dune
Jodorowsky’s Dune��is��billed as “The Greatest Film Never Made” and this film of the��same title, which documents the first, makes a pretty good case for this statement to be true. The general conceit is that in the��mid-70s, hot off another success of a cult film, producer��Michel Seydoux��offered to produce anything director��Alejandro Jodorowsky��wanted to do. Jodorowsky blurted […]
DAVID ��� Speak: Pet Sounds
DAVID ��� Speak: Pet Sounds It’s February, so this month’s issue of David��is all about relationships. And while I tend to be fairly private about my relationships in general, there is one I have absolutely no problem talking about. And that’s just what I’ve done this month for the magazine. So here’s a story about […]
January 28, 2015
Review: Station Eleven
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel My rating: 5 of 5 stars “Survival is not enough.” These are the words painted on the side of the Symphony’s wagon and tattooed on the arm of one of the two primary protagonists of Emily St. John Mandel’s latest novel. The tattooed girl is Kirsten, an actress […]
January 26, 2015
Italy – Day Seven – Padua and Verona – Shakespeare would be proud!
We woke up Monday morning with the sad realization our whirlwind tour of Northern Italy was coming to an end. We weren’t in as big a rush as we had been since today was going to be devoted to seeing the city we’d been staying in and then moving north and eventually ending up at […]
January 25, 2015
Review: Big Hero 6
The latest Disney offering is based on a comic book although it retains little of its initial concept. In this incarnation, the main character of Hiro Hamada is a 14 year old robotics/computer genius who is recruited by Tadashi, his older brother, also a robotics whiz, to join him in a university robotics program. All […]
