a taut, tragic tale with a memorable hit theme song... and Mann's trademarked sense of the way desperate and obsessed men relate to each other and of the dangerous landscape that emphasizes their extreme psychological states.It gets a score of 100% from Rotten Tomatoes.
The stamp artwork features a painting of two tufted puffins by artist Robert Giusti of Bridgewater, Conn., under the art direction of Derry Noyes of Washington, D.C. Both birds sport the striking tufts of long, yellow feathers that give the tufted puffin its name, plumage that only appears during breeding season.You can buy them from the Post Office online here.
A bookshop renowned for its rare works is mysteriously and completely filled with copies of a book entitled 1, which doesn't appear to have a publisher or author. The strange almanac describes what happens to the whole of humanity in the space of a minute. A police investigation begins and the bookshop staff are placed in solitary confinement...
Mongolian yokozuna Harumafuji dominated nemesis Hakuho on Jan. 27 to finish the New Year Grand Sumo Tournament with a perfect 15-0 record, his first at the sport's highest rank.Japan Today explains why he had a lot to prove after disappointing losses at his debut at this rank. The Japan Times quotes him:
“I am really happy,” said Harumafuji. “This is my first title as grand champion. I fought each day and made sure I had no regrets.”Here's video of the final match with commentary by JasonsInJapan, who has a Youtube channel devoted to coverage of these tournaments:
It's a marshmallow world in the winter
When the snow comes to cover the ground
It's the time for play, it's a whipped cream day
I wait for it the whole year round.
Those are marshmallow clouds being friendly
In the arms of the evergreen trees
And the sun is red like a pumpkin head
It's shining so your nose wont freeze.
The world is your snowball, see how it grows
Thats how it goes whenever it snows
The world is your snowball just for a song
Get out and roll it along
It's a yum-yummy world made for sweethearts
Take a walk with your favorite girl
It's a sugar date, what if spring is late
In winter it's a marshmallow world.
An unidentified corpse turns up near the Italian town of Vigata, a place known for its soil rich with potter's clay. Meanwhile, a woman files a missing persons report for the disappearance of her husband, a Colombian man with Sicilian origins who turns out to be related to a local mobster. Then Inspector Montalbano remembers the story from the Bible -Judas's betrayal, the act of remorse, and the money for the potter's field, where those of unknown or foreign origin are to be buried- annd slowly, through myriad betrayals, finds his way to the solution of the crime.There were several things that particularly caught my eye as I read:
A line of Brecht came to mind: "Why should I love the windowsill from which I fell as a child?" But that line still doesn't quite say it, he thought. Because sometimes, when you're already almost old, the hated windowsill from which you fell as a little kid comes urgently back into your memory, and you would even go on a pilgrimage to see it again, if you could see it the way you did then, with the eyes of innocence.Kirkus Reviews calls it "Especially recommended for series fans and mystery readers who enjoy the journey more than the solution." Eurocrime concludes its positive review with this:
The novel is more than a crime novel - though the plot is very clever and convoluted, because of the way Salvo decides to proceed with it - it is a meditation on getting older, on failing powers, and on the uncertain future we all face.
Nearly everything in The Big Lebowski is a put-on, and all that leaves you with is the Coens' bizarrely over-deliberate, almost Teutonic form of rib nudging. It's as if the film itself were standing off to the sidelines, saying ''Look, isn't this a hilarious concept?'' The Coens don't create jokes, exactly—they create ideas for jokes. Still, you can see what they're after.Rolling Stone opens with this:
Maybe it's the way the Coen brothers tie everything together with bowling that makes this Los Angeles-based tale of burnouts, gun buffs, doobies, tumbleweeds, art, nihilism, porn, pissed-on rugs, severed toes, Saddam Hussein, attack marmots, Teutonic technopop and Bob Dylan — not to mention extortion, kidnapping and death — such a hilarious pop-culture hash.Roger Ebert opens by saying,
The Coen brothers' ``The Big Lebowski'' is a genial, shambling comedy about a human train wreck, and should come with a warning like the one Mark Twain attached to ``Huckleberry Finn'': ``Persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.''DVD Talk says, "The Coens' writing is as amusing as ever, with perhaps more quotable dialogue per minute than any movie they've made." Salon.com says, " It is, obviously, one of those movies that demands, and rewards, multiple viewings." Rotten Tomatoes gives it a score of 80%.
Red River (1948) is a classic and complex western (and considered by many critics to be one of the ten best westerns ever made). It is a sweeping, epic story about a cattle drive (historically based on the opening of the Chisholm Trail in 1867) and a film of rivalry and rebellion, spanning a time period of fifteen years.Wild West Web calls it "memorable". The Book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die says,
Hawks, the great film chronicler of macho pursuits, here stages the definitive cow opera, putting all other cattle-drive Westerns in the shade with beautiful, lyrical, exciting sequences of stampeding, rough weather, cowboying, and Indian skirmishes.Roger Ebert considers it a "great film". Rotten Tomatoes gives it a score of 100%.
It was a cold winter morning and snow covered the ground. Little Rabbit went out to look for food and he found two turnips. He gobbled up one of them. Then he said, "It is snowing so hard, and is so cold that perhaps Little Donkey has nothing to eat. I will take my other turnip to him." He ran to Little Donkey's house at once, but Little Donkey was out. So Little Rabbit left the turnip on Little Donkey's doorstep. Then he hopped back home.It seems to be out of print but is available used, including at Amazon.com where the picture below came from:
A mysterious stone, born of worlds long extinct, is the key to powers unimaginable to man —powers that could enable its owners to control the universe. Murdoc Jern, gem trader, finds that possession of the stone has led him to the center of a web of intrigue and murder.The SF Reader gives the book a positive review and says, "The relationship with Eet is the strength of this book." Kirkus Reviews likes the "Good sustaining action".
With his companion Eet, an inscrutable feline mutant with phenomenal ESP powers, he is hunted through space, coming finally to a long forgotten planet inhabited by apelike "sniffers." There, facing the predatory sniffers, the antagonistic Patrol and the laser-guns of the Thieves' Guild, Murdoc must seek the source of the Zero Stone and bargain for his right to pursue his destiny as a free man.
There Will Come Soft RainsThere will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools, singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
That force of chaotic and unsatisfiable desire that Freud called the id is much closer to the surface in a movie like “Fast Five” than ever before in action-cinema history, and part of Lin’s peculiar genius is that he barely tries to conceal it.Roger Ebert says,
What it all comes down to is a skillfully assembled 130 minutes at the movies, with actors capable of doing absurd things with straight faces, and action sequences that toy idly with the laws of physics.DVD Talk closes by saying,
As far as action entertainment goes, Fast Five is a solid offering, despite making its protagonists nearly invincible and increasingly lawless. These are small criticisms for a movie whose 131 minutes feel like 90 thanks to its breakneck pace and pleasing mix of sets and stunts. I look forward to meeting up with these characters again in the inevitable follow-up. Fast Five proves that sometimes you can keep a good thing going.Rotten Tomatoes gives it a score of 78%.
Are you a child of DNA?
Composed of innumerable beings from a wide variety of races, human and otherwise, the vast meta-civilization known as the Amalgam spans nearly the entire galaxy–except for the bright, hot center. There dwell the Aloof, silent residents of the galactic core, who for millions of years have deflected all attempts at communication and contact. But when Rakesh encounters a traveler who claims to have been contacted by the Aloof and shown a meteor bearing traces of DNA, he cannot turn down the opportunity to explore uncharted space in search of a lost world.
On a translucent world of rock called the Splinter, deep within the sea of light known as the Incandescence, lives Roi, a member of a race lost not only to the Amalgam, but to itself. Her world is in grave danger, and it will take an unprecedented flowering of science to save it.
Rakesh's journey will take him across light-years and millennia. Roi's will take her through vistas of learning and discovery just as vast. Greg Egan's blend of dazzling speculation and gripping storytelling will leave you stunned by the wondrous vision of the far future that he has created.
...the scientific model is that they spell this significance out clearly and fully. That is what this particular scientist (Gregory Egan BSc) does in this novel. He does it all the way through. It is deadening.SF Site says, "For all its hints of greatness and pleasing moments, Incandescence ultimately feels like a failed literary experiment" and closes by calling the book "frankly rather dull". SF Signal says, "If you don’t particularly want an awesome science lecture with your science fiction, there’s not much else here."
Director Phil Alden Robinson and his writers, Paul Attanasio and Daniel Pyne, do a spellbinding job of cranking up the tension, they create a portrait of convincing realism, and then they add the other stuff because, well, if anybody ever makes a movie like this without the obligatory Hollywood softeners, audiences might flee the theater in despair.Rotten Tomatoes gives it a score of 59%.
I slid my belt off and let it dangle from my hand. I watched her face. I saw the gamut of emotions flash by in quick succession, leaving a startled expression of pure animal terror.Stunning! Just stunning!
"Maybe you should know why you're getting this, Ethel. It's something you should have gotten a long time ago. Your father should have given it to you when you started fooling around with one of those Commie bastards who was after the dough you could throw his way instead of yourself. I'm going to lace the hell out of you and you can scream all you want, and nobody will be around to hear you but me and that's what I want to hear."
Sterritt, the author of 1993’s The Films of Alfred Hitchcock, hailed the discovery as “one of the most significant developments in memory for scholars, critics and admirers of Hitchcock’s extraordinary body of work.”The picture at the top of the post is from FilmPreservation.org, which is hosting the film online for a limited time.
1. Metropolis (1927)Ones I've seen are in bold print.
2. The Island of Lost Souls (1932)
3. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
4. Alphaville (1965)
5. 2001 (1968)
6. Stalker (1979)
7. Born in Flames (1981)
8. Blade Runner (1982)
9. Brother from Another Planet (1984)
10. Brazil (1985)
11. The Fly (1986)
12. Ghost in the Shell (1995)
13. The Matrix (1999)
14. Adaptation (2002)
15. Teknolust (2002)
16. Avatar (2009)
17. Moon (2009)
18. District 9 (2009) (started watching it but didn't finish)
19. Looper (2012)
If this was a movie about young men instead of young women, and if the illegal activity in the story involved a suitcase of money or a harebrained plot to kill someone ... then its genre roots would be no mystery.EW gives it a grade of "A" and says,
Nothing good happens in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, the riveting, horrifying chronicle of an illegal abortion performed in 1987 when Ceau¸escu's dictatorial hand still gripped Romania's throat. And yet no lover of greatness in filmmaking will want to look away from one of the very best movies of 2007Christianity Today has discussion questions and says,
The film is not a pro-life propaganda film any more than it is a pro-choice one. What it is, is an honest, bracing, unflinching, compassionate work of art—superbly acted, staged, and directedRoger Ebert praises the film in general and the acting in particular and notes, "obtaining an illegal abortion was much the same in this country until some years ago, and also in Britain". The film won awards. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a score of 95%.
Humanity has colonized the solar system -Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond- but the stars are still out of our reach.Kirkus Reviews describes it as "A huge, churning, relentlessly entertaining melodrama buoyed by confidence that human values will prevail." io9 calls it "a fun ride and the perfect thing for a long summer afternoon by the beach or the air conditioner". Cheryl Morgan says, "Hopefully it will also cause its readers to ponder the value of radical transparency." SF Signal says, "Leviathan Wakes’ solar system is a masterpiece of world building," "The action sequences of the novel are where the writing shines nearly as well as the worldbuilding" and, "But what this novel has most of all is simple: it’s fun!" Wired.com says,
Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, the Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for -and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why.
Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks. When the trail leads him to the Scopuli and rebel sympathizer Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything.
Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations -and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe.
If you’re looking for a solid science fiction story that’s not about dazzling technology and fantastical aliens, that won’t confuse you with overly-complex descriptions of the way governments and corporations work, and that won’t throw made-up words and cryptic names at you left and right… you’re going to like Leviathan Wakes.The WSJ writes,
The story rips along, driven by two main characters who don't like each other, each of whom has his own uncompromising morality. Even more compelling than the pace, though, is the sense of possibility.
The “rules” of the experience are simple: there are none. Remember, this isn’t a challenge. If you would like to join us in discussing any science fiction reading or television viewing or movie watching you do over the time period, please do. Although signing up isn’t required, nor is posting your reviews, I do like to be able to keep up with folks who are participating, so there will be a Mr. Linky at the end of this post and there is a Sci-Fi Experience Review Site for you to link any SF-related posts of any kind that you would like the other participants to check out. Again, this doesn’t have to be entirely book related. It really is about experiencing science fiction (and even non-fiction having to do with space or technology) of all kinds.
1. Raiders of the Lost ArkOnes I've seen are in bold print. My favorite on this list is The Fifth Element, but I agree that they -ones I've seen, of course- are all fun.
2. Time Bandits
3. Escape from New York
4. The Princess Bride
5. Big Trouble in Little China
6. The Fifth Element
7. Galaxy Quest
8. Total Recall (original)
9. Stargate
10. The Crow
11. Lockout
12. Dredd
A man who was about to cross a river noticed a rattlesnake snake also trying to get across. The snake looked up and said, "Could you take me across the river? I'll drown by myself." The man felt sorry for the snake but knew that rattlesnakes were poisonous. He said, "You're a snake. If I take you across the river you will bite me." "I won't bite you," promised the snake. So the man picked up the snake, put him in his pocket and carried him across the river. When they got to dry land and the man took the snake out of his pocket, the snake bit him. "You said you weren't going to bite me!" cried the dying man. "You knew what I was when you picked me up," hissed the snake.Well, Obama's not a rattlesnake, but he was a moderate all along; and we knew what he was when we picked him up. He's been much better than the alternative, but a sainted savior and champion of far-left causes he never was. Compromising first and best is not the goal I want my president to aim for. Am I disappointed? Yes! Terribly, terribly disappointed. But to complain that he's not a flaming left-wing liberal seems a bit unfair since -as far as I can tell, he is the Obama that I used to know. The disappointment is understandable, considering what we wanted, but that's politics. He was -and is- better than the other party's alternative.
The fourteenth-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is one of the greatest classics of English literature, but one of the least accessible to most twentieth-century readers. Written in an obscure dialect, it is far more difficult to digest in the original than are most other late medieval English works. Yet any translation is bound to lose much of the flavour of the original. This edition of the poem offers the original text together with a facing-page translation. With the alliterative Middle English before the reader, James Winny provides a non-alliterative and sensitively literal rendering in modern English. This edition also provides an introduction, explanatory and textual notes, a further note on some words that present particular difficulties, and, in the appendices, two contemporary stories, The Feast of Bricriu and The Knight of the Sword, which provide insight on the poem.There are many translations. The one I came across at my favorite local used book store is the 1992 James Winny translation. It's easy to read and leans towards accurate meaning when alliterative fidelity compromises that. No translation is perfect. I'm fine with losing some of the form in the service of meaning, though I realize some of the meaning may be in the form itself.
But it is no wonder if a fool acts insanely
And is brought to grief through womanly wiles;
For so was Adam beguiled by one, here on earth,
Solomon by several women, and Samson was another -
Delilah was cause of his fate - and afterwards David
Was deluded by Bathsheba, and suffered much grief.
Since these were ruined by their wiles, it would be a great gain
To love women and not trust them, if a man knew how.
For these were the noblest of old, whom fortune favored
Above all others on earth, or who dwelt under heaven.
Bequiled were they all
By women they thought kind.
Since I too have been tricked
Then I should pardon find.
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