Bryce Moore's Blog, page 208

End of the Year Cleaning

With all the craziness this past semester, my house got more than a little out of control. Denisa and I just didn’t have the time and energy to give to it to make sure it stayed in order. So clutter started creeping back into the corners, finding little niches where it could begin to spawn and gather in strength.

Yuck.

So with this end of the year vacation, I’ve been taking time every day to clean something. In theory, it wasn’t going to be anything too spectacular. I wanted to emphasize fun, not work this time off. But as is so often the case with me, I found myself unable to stop things once I started them. So I was moving bookcases, televisions, beds, dressers, fridges, toy boxes–vacuuming every square inch of a room that I could. (I’ll admit–I didn’t move quite everything. The bed mattress? Yes. The entire bed frame? No. I’m such a slacker. But in my defense, I’ve also been cleaning out drawers and cabinets.

It’s ended up taking much more time than I anticipated, mainly because it was a lot dirtier than I’d like to admit. Some of these things hadn’t been cleaned in years. (Anytime I want to really be inspired to clean, I watch an episode of Hoarders. Suddenly. I morph into a cleaning machine. Didn’t need to do it this time–my house was dirty enough all on its lonesome.) It also didn’t help that I kept coming across new and interesting problems to solve, like the discovery that three of my speakers had been helpfully “disconnected” by the mice, so I had to stop and splice wires back together. Joy!

The good news is that it’s all cleaned now, and I’m feeling much better about things. (I know–you were so worried.) I’d really like to avoid this kind of binge cleaning in the future. My current plan? I’ve divided the house into 6 parts and assigned each part a month on a twice-a-year rotating schedule. That way, every part of the house will be cleaned twice a year, and I won’t have to do it all at once. (And when I do it, it won’t take forever to do.)

In any case, yay for a clean house. I feel better and think better when things are in order. Not sure if I’m alone in that, but once things get to a certain point, if I don’t clean things, I just don’t feel like I can function. (On the other hand, I think that point for me is fairly more cluttered and dusty than the point is for many other people . . .)

And on that note, I’m going to go enjoy the rest of my vacation. See you all Monday!

A Look Back at 2014

And here we are at last: the end of another year. This one seems like it’s been a bit crazier than most. I thought I might take some time on this, the last day of the year, to look back at a few of the . . . livelier events of the year as portrayed on my blog. Maybe I’ll have something to add in the way of perspective. Who knows? And at the same time, if you missed any really good posts by yours truly, perhaps you can catch up on them now.) Ready to take a walk with me? Top ten posts (as measured by page views) for the year 2014. Here we go:

Honorable Mention 1–New Book Deal, Baby!–It might not have cracked the top ten, but the news that I have a new book coming out in Fall 2016 definitely deserves a spot on this list. So much happy there, and great to be able to share it with people. Sorry you’ll have to wait so long to read it, but that’s the way publishing works.

Honorable Mention 2–When TRC Loses a Permanent Tooth–The year began with an ouch. Seeing my son walk in the door missing is front tooth is still branded on my memory, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget that sucker punch of a feeling. Strange that teeth should have such an impact. The good news is that he’s now had his root canal, and soon-ish he should be able to get the cap put on his tooth so his smile returns to the way it was. Yay for that, but man did it take a while. A reminder that sometimes small, quick events can have very long-reaching effects.

10–The Day My Job Blew Up–Speaking of quick events, we officially begin with a personal post, all about the changes that happened at my job when my boss’s position was eliminated. That sort of gobbled up my life for the first half of the year. The good news? I think it’s all ended up more or less okay. My boss moved on to better and brighter things in warmer climates, and he seems like he’s doing well down there. Meanwhile, life at work has returned to normal, for values of “normal” that mean “the school is still over 2 million in the hole, and there are going to be more cuts next month, so hold onto your hats.” Still, I’d like to think the library has paid its dues, but I’ve long since learned not to make such rash assumptions about anything when it comes to my workplace.

9–Bryce Waxes Philosophical about Perception and Reality–A lengthy, reflective look at how we all tend to evaluate “the way things are” by the small slice of reality that we’ve each encountered. It was a response to the Ordain Women movement. (More on that later in the list. Looking it over, it’s a nice piece, and I’m glad it got as much attention as it did.

8–A Plea to Netflix and HBO–A response piece I wrote about my frustration for the amount of random sex HBO and Netflix toss into otherwise awesome television series. This one got noticed by a few outlets and generated some good traffic and responses. It’s a trend I don’t think is likely to change any time soon, alas. Not as long as the TV shows keep getting good viewership. It’ll take some blockbuster shows that haven’t been pornified to make companies change their mind.

7–Denisa has Enslaved House Elves–Okay. I’ll admit it. I intentionally made the title of this post (I Discover the World-Shaking Truth about My Wife) clickbaity in hopes that more people would see it. And it worked! It was a fun post to write. I’m still convinced she’s got house elves somewhere around the house, though I have yet to find them. The hunt continues in 2015.

6–A Mormon Carebear Stare–I’ll admit I was worried when I heard Mormons had been asked to “sweep the earth with messages filled with righteousness and truth.” I’m very pleased to report that my fears were unfounded. In practice, I haven’t seen anything dire (or worse–disgustingly hokey) as a result of this. I have seen the church post some pretty savvy social media fodder, and have it picked up by members and spread around the interwebs. I’m all for well produced videos that accurately portray my religion, as well as articles that bring misunderstood aspects about it into better focus. So this is one area where I’m very pleased to find out I was wrong.

5–DC Chops Her Hair for Charity–A feel good story for a change. My daughter had lovely long blonde hair, and she cut it and donated it to charity. I was very surprised by how short it got cut, and I think she was too after the fact. (There were a few tears later that day–but she was very happy with what she’d done. Charity that costs us nothing often isn’t worth a whole lot.) We’ve since discovered that DC’s hair grows at record speed. It’s much longer already, and she’s back to braiding it.

4–Ordain Women–Ah, the lovely Ordain Women post. This generated a huge outpouring of responses on Facebook, and took me quite a long time to curate and contain. (In hindsight, titling a post “Ordain Women?” and starting it with the words “Yup. The time has come, sayeth the Bryce” wasn’t my most genius word-smithing ever–since the whole point of the post was to discuss the complicated nuances of the concept, and not to take a firm stance one way or another. I’m very pleased to look back at the post and see some positive change in the intervening months. Women can still be seminary teachers after they have children, for one thing. (Baby steps, people.)

3–Picking Your Trenches–This is a post I’ve been tempted to put up again a few times since I first wrote it, because I think it pertains to so many things. So often, people who could be friends (should be friends) dig a great big trench on either side of an issue and focus only on their differences instead of their similarities. It all becomes about that one issue. Abortion. Gay Rights. Evolution. Politics. Health Care. You name it. People stop becoming round characters and choose to become flat–to become wholly focused and defined by that one issue. This was written particularly as a response to the Ordain Women movement, but it applies to so much more. Glad so many people read it. I hope it changed some minds.

2–A Look into Mormon Polygamy–Man. A lot of my top posts turn out to be all about Mormonism. Go figure. When the “news” broke that Joseph Smith had 30-40 wives, it made a fairly big splash with Mormons. Not because he’d had the wives, but because the story so many people had been taught had turned out to be not quite the whole picture. This is another post that caused a lot of discussion–most of it positive and helpful for once. (Yay for that!) Not much more to add on it, though.

1–Social Media is Awesome–Look, Ma! Something not about Mormons! There was a viral video going around all about how horrid smartphones are. I wrote a response to it, and it really took off. Probably because the people sharing it on social media liked being able to defend themselves from the attack the video was making on social media. I also think it spread as much as it did because it was for a wider audience. That video still makes me bristle. Grr.

The Hobbit Review: A Look Back at Middle Earth

Last night I saw a new Lord of the Rings movie for the last time. Yes, I suppose it was technically a Hobbit movie, but let’s be honest here: Jackson’s Hobbit movies are prequels to Lord of the Rings first, and adaptations of The Hobbit second.

And I am perfectly fine with that. No–even more. I love it.

I know there are Hobbit lovers out there who are really disappointed in Jackson’s Hobbit films. They take the book they love, and they Legolas it to death. There’s dwarf/elf love. sandworms, evil elves, and more. Stuff Tolkien never mentioned in his children’s book–and all very valid points. But you don’t hire the director of the Lord of the Rings to do the Hobbit and have him adapt the Hobbit as-written.

You hire him to do the prequels.

The Hobbit (book) is so different from the later works. It’s a children’s story. Simpler. Less complex, with characters that do things for straightforward reasons. Any of the extra complexity that it’s developed over the years is due to what we found out after the fact from Tolkien. And honestly, if I want to watch an adaptation of The Hobbit that’s faithful to the book, I’ll watch the Rankin & Bass version. (Haven’t seen it in forever, but I have fond memories of the movie from when I watched it as a kid.)

Me? I’m all for Jackson’s take on the material. I know it’s his own spin. I don’t expect him to hold perfectly to the canon of Tolkien. It’s an adaptation. Changes must be made.

Sitting down in that theater, I was reminded of the time way back when, when I was sitting in the theater at the midnight release for Fellowship of the Ring. My biggest feeling then? Fear. I was so worried that the movie was going to be awful. That it would be like so much of the other fantasy movies produced at the time: corny, with poorly developed characters and awful special effects. (The example I always think of first? Dungeons and Dragons: The Movie.)

Instead, the movie was tremendous. Outright amazing, in my book. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is one of the few movies I will happily watch again, and again, and again. Extended editions, of course. Why? Because I would happily sit there watching Jackson’s world come alive for every extra second of it he’d be willing to show me. It’s such great attention to detail, in world building, costume design, set design–you name it.

In preparation for this, the final Hobbit movie, Denisa and I watched the extended editions of the first two Hobbit movies back to back. Again, I prefer the extended editions to the theatrical releases. It seems to me that Jackson takes his time to present the story the way he wanted it presented in those extended editions. They flesh out things and smooth out the pacing in ways that are hard to describe, but noticeable. In fact, when watching the third movie last night, there were a few spots where I’m fairly certain things will go better once the extended edition is released. Parts where it seemed like something was missing. Nothing egregious–just spots I noticed where I felt the lack of the extended version.

What did I think about the movie?

I loved it, of course. Loved every last piece of it. I’d go out and buy the extended version today if I could. These movies are completely made for me. Yes, there was a lot of fighting. One ginormous battle that takes up the bulk of the movie. People complained of the first movie that it took too long to get going, and they’ve complained of the last movie that the climax took forever to get through. Me? I view all three movies as one very long film. Seen from that angle, it all feels just right.

Yes, there were many changes to the source material. (But come on–we get the chance to see the White Council duke it out with the Necromancer. How awesome is that?) Legolas seems to have been written for these films to find as many ways to have him being incredibly, unbelievably awesome as possible. Honestly, now I want an alternate version to Lord of the Rings where at the council of Elrond, when they’re asking who will take the ring to Mordor, Legolas just snatches it, catches a passing giant bat, and ninjas his way through one long obstacle course until he chucks it into the volcano and turns around to pose for his close up.

In these movies, Jackson looked at the story of the Hobbit and asked how it would fit with the world he created in Lord of the Rings. People freak out about Legolas appearing in the film, but I have 100% no problem with it. Why? Because of Thranduil. (Pardon me while I get my geek on.) Thranduil is in the Hobbit. He’s Legolas’s father. Does it make sense that the elf prince would be playing a significant role in these happenings? Of course it does. Legolas is in The Hobbit. He just isn’t mentioned by name.

Time and time again, Jackson is looking at The Hobbit through the eyes of a realist (from a LOTR point of view). Why would the elves refuse to let the dwarves go? Why would the dwarves be so concerned with getting back to Erebor. Why why why. To make a movie that would fit with LOTR, these whys had to be answered. He couldn’t get away with glossing over things, and so sometimes he created answers, and other times he found answers in the appendices that fit the bill.

Again, I’m all good with that.

Will you like The Battle of Five Armies? I don’t know. What did you think about the other movies? This will be more of the same. It won’t change your mind about anything. For me? It’s a 9/10, and I’m almost certain it’ll be a 10/10 once I see the extended version.

Loved every second.

Movie Review: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Let’s get one thing out in the open right away: I’m a  fan. Tenenbaums? Moonrise Kingdom? Mr. Fox? I love the look and style of his movies. How well each frame is arranged and thought through. So the fact that I loved The Grand Budapest Hotel shouldn’t really surprise anyone. But there’s one other thing to get out in the open quickly, as well: Anderson movies, while lovely and fun and interesting and artistic and thought provoking, also often have some content in them that will offend some. They’re often rated R. Not for pervasive sexuality or non-stop swearing. This isn’t Boogie Nights or Goodfellas, people. But there’ll be random scenes or shots that will shock you in a moment and then they’re gone. Do I personally wish he’d tone it back a bit? Yes. I think he could still do exactly what he does without having the occasional swear word or sex image.

But he obviously feels differently, and that’s his right.

With those disclaimers out of the way, let me say why I loved the Grand Budapest so much. It’s a heist movie, people. A Wes Anderson heist movie. Take a favorite director, add a favorite genre, and it’s a total Christmas gift to me. Ralph Fiennes plays a concierge of the titular hotel, and when one of his patrons passes away, he ends up stealing an invaluable piece of art. Sort of. It’s complicated, like any other Anderson movie. And I also don’t want to give too much away.

The film has a lovely Eastern European flair (and I discovered after the fact that the bulk of it was filmed where I served my mission in Germany–Gorlitz, in case you were wondering. Can the movie get any better for me?). The settings are perfect, the buildings are gorgeous–such a well put together movie. The acting is also spot on, with a great performance by Fiennes, and notable roles for Willem Defoe, Adrian Brody, Bill Murray (though not enough–more of a cameo than anything), Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Jude Law, Saorise Ronan, Edward Nortan, and Tilda Swinton.

Great acting, great directing–what else do you need? Great writing. And the movie has that in spades, as well. Fascinating dialogue and narration, little in-jokes sprinkled throughout to keep even the slow parts entertaining.

Honestly, I wish I could unreservedly recommend this movie to everyone. I know so many people who would adore it, but who I don’t feel like I can encourage them to see it, and all for about 15 seconds total of the 100 minute movie. If it were only 15 seconds all at once, 0r 15 seconds that I could describe where not to look, but it isn’t. It’s flashes and images splashed up 7 or 8 times through the movie, and they’re shocking enough to stop me from making that unreserved recommendation.

Still, if you’re not put off by that warning, or you can somehow find an edited version of this at some point, this really isn’t a movie you want to miss at all. 9/10 from yours truly.

Anyone else seen it? What did you think?

A Letter from Santa Claus

TRC and I had an . . . interesting conversation last night. It didn’t go too terribly well. Thankfully, I sent off a missive to the North Pole for a bit of help, and I promptly received a reply this morning, with a personal note from the fat man himself for my son. I had to peek–curiosity got the better of me, and if that means I get fewer presents this year, so be it. I thought some of you might be interested to see what the note had to say, so I’m posting it here for your perusal. Really sums up a lot of my feelings about the holiday, Santa Claus, and why I believe.

Go figure.

In any case, I hope you all have a lovely Christmas. I’ll see you next week. Here’s the letter:

Dear TRC,

So. I got my daily report in this morning, and I saw that you and your father had a talk about me last night. That’s something that happens a lot to kids your age. Your dad was particularly upset with how the conversation went, though. He doesn’t handle surprise chats too well sometimes, and so I decided to send you a personal letter to explain things myself. Straight shooting, straight from the fat man from the North.

The truth is, Christmas got away from me. Like most good things, it just got to be so successful that I couldn’t keep up—not with the elves, not with the extra reindeer, not with modern advances in present making technology. So I was faced with a choice. I could either give up the whole thing, or I could switch my approach.

And really, what choice did I have? The whole reason I started this tradition was to bring happiness and joy to children. To see the light in their eyes when they opened a present they’d been hoping for. To see the excitement they had when they looked out the window, wondering if they’d catch a glimpse of my sleigh. If I gave up Christmas, what would it do to all of them?

So I switched my approach.

There comes a time in an adult’s life—usually right around when they get married—when they make the transition. It’s a big shift, though it might not seem like that at the time. They go from getting presents from me to getting presents for me. And I don’t mean they’re wrapping up harnesses for the reindeer for me to open on Christmas morning.

What I mean is that adults who still believe in me (and many still do) start to work for me. I don’t pay them, just as I don’t pay the elves or the reindeer. They do it because they love me and they love you and they want to make sure Christmas keeps on Christmasing.

You wanted to know how it really works, and I’m telling you. Children write letters to me. Their parents help them, and they send those letters off to me. I take a look over what the kids want, and I compare it to how good of kids they’ve been that year, and then I let the parents know what presents the kids should be getting Christmas morning, and together, we make sure that happens.

I still go out every Christmas Eve. It’s important to me that you know that. I still get the reindeer suited up. I still have the elves working for me all year round, getting things ready for Christmas. And for a few lucky families out there, I make an in-person visit. I let the parents know ahead of time, of course. No need for kids to get double presents, after all. But I make the parents swear an oath of secrecy not to reveal that I came in person. It wouldn’t be fair to the other children.

I must head out, though. That way, every Christmas morning, every child who opens up a present from me can still look at it in wonder, not knowing exactly how it appeared there. Not knowing which elf worked on its assembly. Even children like you, who already have started to wonder if I really could exist.

Have I visited your house personally over the years? I can’t let you know. But I think you have a hunch already, and it’s always a good thing to follow your hunches. But I can also say that your mom and dad are some of my best employees. They do a lot for me, and I appreciate their help. You should too. One day, I hope you’ll be working for me as well. But for now, enjoy your Christmases. Keep those letters coming. Keep being a good boy. And don’t give your sister such a hard time all the time.

Christmas is a wonderful time of year. It’s magic, and just like most magic, it’s better if you don’t look into it too much. Stare too long at a piece of magic, and it will vanish into the air before you know it.

Merry Christmas, TRC. I hope you like what I picked out for you this year, and I look forward to hearing from you again next year.

Love,

Santa

Movie Review: Big Hero 6

Yes, I’m late to the party on this one. Sorry about that. But when the local theater offers a free matinee showing of a movie, how can I say no? So I took TRC and DC and headed off to see Big Hero 6 on Saturday. I’d heard good things about the movie, and I had some high hopes going into it.

For 2/3 of the movie, my hopes weren’t just met–they were easily surpassed. The movie is about a robotics genius of a boy who’s trying to find his way in life. He’s only 14, and he’s already graduated from high school and isn’t sure if he wants to actually go to college or not. He makes an awesome robot invention, tragedy strikes, and he deals with that tragedy as best he can–largely through the help of a giant inflatable robot doctor. I’ve already talked about the plot more than I’d like, but since the general description on IMDB discusses the fact that the boy becomes part of a super hero team . . . I guess I’m not giving anything huge away by mentioning that.

Which is also where the film falls apart a fair bit for me. Don’t get me wrong–it’s still a good movie. It’s just that when the super hero stuff kicks in at the 2/3 mark, it stops being an original, inventive, unique film and morphs into a movie that’s playing largely to the tropes of the genre it settles into. Why settle for a two star movie plot when what you were doing just minutes before was 4 star territory?

The first 2/3 of this movie are fantastic. They’re playing on multiple different levels, dealing with a wide range of emotions in a way that’s very Pixar-esque. And then it just give up on all of that and goes with the simple straightforward approach.

I still really enjoyed myself, but I couldn’t help leaving a bit disappointed. Still, a 7/10. Just wish it were higher. Was I the only one to feel this way about the movie? I’d really like to hear some other opinions on it.

The Monopoly Money Effect: Willing Suspension of Disbelief

So I reviewed Snowpiercer a few days ago, and I was promptly greeted on Facebook by responses of friends–friends whose opinions I actually value–saying they loved the movie. (I value the opinions of all of my friends. Honestly.) And they made some good arguments for why the movie really worked for them. I considered those arguments, and I stand by my low rating of the film. I still have no desire to ever watch the movie again. But I can understand where they’re coming from. I think what happened to me in this case–and to many other reviewers of various works–is that I just wasn’t able to overcome the initial inertia of watching the movie.

What I mean by that is that anytime I sit down to watch a movie or read a book, I give that work a bit of a freebie. Think of it as the free money you get when you start to play Monopoly. But it’s not money–it’s trust. It’s me saying, “I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt.” As the work progresses, it either spends that money or earns more money. If I’m enjoying it and having a good time, it earns the money to the point where I stop thinking about it. If I’m not enjoying it, I keep eyeing that money and thinking how else I might be able to spend it.

It’s all about suspension of disbelief. Movies, books–they’re all make believe. No one’s actually fighting on a train in front of me. I’m not really going to Mordor. I’m being told a story. And I choose to believe in that story. To give it the benefit of the doubt.

Here’s a bit of a review of Vodnik that I saw the other day: “Tomas does not sound like a teenager. he sounds like an adult trying to sound like a teenager.” In this case, I’d say something happened toward the beginning of the book that made the reader doubt the voice of the novel. I didn’t capture her for whatever reason, and that was that. I don’t take it personally. Everyone has different requirements for what it costs for a work to earn money. Snowpiercer lost me as a viewer. It won over many other people. That’s how it goes.

Ideally, as a writer, my goal is to remove as many barriers as possible in the first few chapters of a book–to make it so that the reader has such a good time reading, they stop eyeing the money pile. As soon as you can get over that hump, then you’re off and running. How do I do it? I try to make the voice engaging. Hook the reader with intriguing actions or mysteries or settings. Anything to distract them from that pile. Humor, romance, villainy. Make them forget the money, and you’re golden.

But it’s Christmas. Enough with Monopoly. Let’s use sledding as an example, instead. You ever sit down on a sled, hoping for a great run, and the thing hardly moves? I hate that. That’s the inertia I’m trying to overcome as a writer. You can’t please everyone. Some people are going to sit in your sled and go nowhere. Fact of life. But if you set things up just right, your goal as a writer is for your reader to have this sort of experience:

If you can do that, you’re going places as an author.

The Interview: The School Bomb Scare of Hollywood

For those of you who might not be following the news, Sony produced a comedy earlier this year: The Interview. The plot is all about an attempt to assassinate North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. Sure, it’s a bit . . . bizarre of a plot, but hey–this is Hollywood.

Except North Korea didn’t take a shine to the idea of their supreme leader being the butt of a punchline. Instead of making a formal protest, they got some hackers together to break into Sony’s servers and uncover a whole truckload of dirt. A boatload. A landfill’s worth. Embarrassing emails. Backroom politics. You name it. Sony’s been plastered all over the news about it.

Then some groups decided to up the ante. They said there would be terrorist attacks the day The Interview was released: Christmas Day. To protest.

In response, Sony has decided to yank The Interview from theaters. It’s no longer going to be released.

Um . . .

Part of me understands where Sony’s coming from. If a big attack materialized during the release of The Interview, they would take heat for having released the movie the way they did. Guaranteed. But if they yank the movie (as they have done), then they take heat for letting the terrorists win.

Growing up, we used to have bomb scares in my school district regularly (not where I went to high school–before I moved to PA). And each time, school would get cancelled. I understood why. You don’t put kids’ lives at risk. At the same time, each of those threats were proven bogus. But the word got out: if you want to get out of school for the day, call in a bomb threat. (These days, there are social apps that let you post local messages anonymously, making this sort of thing much easier. Ugh.)

What sort of a precedent is Sony setting by this? What if extremists decide they don’t like a movie? Can they just threaten to gun down a theater, and then the movie gets pulled? This is such an obvious case of freedom of speech, that I don’t think it should have been in any question.

The Interview should have rolled out as scheduled.

Then again, if Sony had really wanted to stick it to North Korea, it could have released The Interview online. For free. Through hackers. And publicly said that it wouldn’t prosecute the hackers, but that it would also love any contributions people might want to make. Something a bit outside the box. Fight hackers with hackers–that sort of thing.

Of course, I don’t know how Seth Rogen and the filmmakers would have felt about such an approach. But how is that any worse than what they’re getting now instead? Is my zany idea too far out there? I really don’t know enough about how movies are produced to be able to say one way or another.

I do know that, like it or not, a movie by Seth Rogen deserves as much protection as a movie by a hoity toity artiste. It’s art, even if it’s “popular.” Hollywood needs to stick to its guns, and then expect the government to stick to its. Terrorist threats should be dealt with by the army and the government. Not by corporations. Giving into them in this manner makes things much more dangerous elsewhere.

What sort of a world do we live in these days?

Well, consider for a moment this movie that was released by Hollywood in 194o: The Great Dictator.

You go, Charlie Chaplin. The film went on to be nominated for 5 Oscars, by the way.

Movie Review: Snowpiercer

I’d heard a lot about Snowpiercer. Post-apocalyptic movie that takes place entirely on a train? And it had gotten on to some “best of” lists? Sign me up. It came onto Netflix, and I was lying in bed recovering from that yucky headache, so I gave it a shot.

Wow. What an incredibly bad movie.

Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t wholly without merit. The visuals are pretty impressive. There are a few intriguing scenes. But for the most part, this movie is garbage. Why? Because the plot and story that serves as the structure for the whole film make no sense whatsoever.

Here’s the set up: to fight global warming, nations release an experimental chemical into the atmosphere. It works all too well. The world is plunged into a global ice age, and the only people left alive are the ones who made it onto a train that’s designed to never stop. It circles the globe on a long and winding track that takes a year to make one loop. Somehow, it can handle all the snow that builds up on the tracks in the intervening year.

Anyway.

On board this train, you’ve got very strict classes. The nearer you get to the engine, the more hoity-toity the people become. So the ones back at the caboose are the complete downtrodden. They don’t like being trodden down, so they stage an uprising. It’s goal? Get to the engine.

That’s pretty much the movie. The world building makes no sense whatsoever. Why are the people in the back of the train do abused? Because the rich people feel like it, essentially. They do no work. They serve no real purpose to the rest of the train. They exist to make the rich people feel richer? I have no idea. And what are the rich people doing? Being rich. Eating good food. Reading the paper. Going to parties.

Where does the food come from? Where do these people sleep? How in the world is this train self sustaining?

Completely ignored. I’ve read Aesop fables with more character development and world building than this flick. I have no idea how it’s managed to get a 7.0 on IMDB. An 84 on Meteoritic. Salon called it the best film of the year. I’m totally baffled. The only explanation I can come up with for people liking this movie is they don’t think about the underlying elements necessary for this world to work. They’re not sci-fi/fantasy fans. (What’s wrong with these people?) Complete waste of time, even when you’re stuck in bed. 3/10, with the few points its getting due solely to the effects.

Was I just in a bad mood when I watched it?

Book Review: The Martian

The Martian by Andy Weir

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

369 pages of incredible. Really, I can’t say enough good things about this book. It’s a book that’s very easy to sum up: on the third mission to Mars, an astronaut gets left behind. His crew assumes he’s died, and they have to leave in a crisis. But he didn’t die.

And now he’s alone on the planet, with almost no chance of ever getting back to Earth.

Think of it as Apollo 13 on Mars.

I’d heard a lot of good things about the book, but I really wasn’t prepared for just how engrossing a read it would be. It’s been a long time since I’ve been so wrapped up in a plot–so into it that I was actually feeling nervous for the character. That’s hard to pull off at the speed of reading, and Weir did it wonderfully.

I do have to throw in a disclaimer for some readers–there’s R-rated language in the book. Let’s face it: if most people were left for dead on a barren planet, they probably wouldn’t say “Golly gee willickers.” The main character doesn’t, either. But if that’s not a deal breaker for you, then I strongly encourage you to give this book a shot.

Honestly, I’d give it 6 stars if I could. It’s that good. Realistic science fiction that’s approachable and understandable. The conflicts are believable (to this non-scientist reader, at least), as are the ways they are resolved.

Can you tell I liked this book?

Even more impressive to me is the fact that it was self-published. I’ll be honest: I rarely meet a self-published book worth going further than 5 chapters in. Weir put it up on his website in serialized form, then sold the ebook on Amazon for $1, until he’d sold 35,000 copies, at which point print publishing perked up. Nice to see a success story once in a while.

Any which way you slice it, the book’s very well done. Any of you already read it? I’d love to hear what you had to say.

View all my reviews