Room however is a good movie

Having watched it all the way through this past weekend. I felt like the 2nd movie was a good follow up to the original. Solid 7 out of 10 from me :likecat:

Historically, I have used The Hunt for Red October as a broad generalization for the whole "the book was better than the movie" trope.

That changed today.

Ready Player One was a fantastic novel, and a messy, partial-birth abortion of a film. The kind where the fetus is still twitching when the abortionist rams the needle into the base of its skull. My best guess is that the screenwriter and director were briefly shown a picture of the front cover of the book, and then given several million dollars and a suitcase full of dead ferrets from which to create the movie.


The usual advice in situations such as this is "Read the book first, then watch the film." Well, read the book, but do not watch the film. Life is too precious of a commodity to waste two hours of it in this manner. This film makes Faster & Furiouser-er look like Academy Award material by comparison.


This is, without question, the worst translation of a good book into cinematic form which I have ever witnessed.

For me, "Dune" exemplified that whole book vs movie "thing" (ie. book=>great, movie=>shite).

I watched the movie first when I was young because the Dune books are regarded as one of the best Sci-Fi series (Star Wars stole lots of stuff from it) but came out of the movie wondering WTF was that all about?

I've now read the original trilogy (actually 6 books in the "trilogy", Dune, Heretics of Dune and Chapter House Dune are worth reading several time because they're great), the two sets of prequel trilogies (3 books in each of these trilogies), and the last 2 disappointing sequels.

I now understand why Dune was such a great Sci-Fi book series and the only reason to watch the movie is to learn how to pronounce some of the obscure names in the books.

There's just not enough time in a movie to do most books justice or even make sense when watched on their own - the Lord of the Rings series came close, you can watch them on their own without reading the books (but you do miss a LOT).

I still haven't seen the movie, book when I read the book I thought to myself, This would be a great 2 or 3 part movie. When I saw the first trailor months later that they did it in one chunk, I knew it wasnt going to be as good as it could have been as a movie.

Joe, have you read armada yet? very "Last Starfighter"

I watched SOLO with Y8s over the weekend. Was very good; probably best movie I've seen in a while.

Also, I tried watching both Black Panther and Justice League on the plane -- had to turn both off talk about abortions.

I have not. Started reading Artemis again last night. An excellent second act from the author of The Martian.

But I shall check it out.

I'll disagree here - compared to 'Martian', I'd give it a 6, maybe 7 if I was feeling generous.

Really?

It's definitely a very different style of storytelling, but I felt like the characters were reasonably well-developed and the plot neither plodding not rushed.

Granted, it's hard to follow-up something as huge as Martian, but I felt like it was a solid entry in what I hope will be a long bibliography.

I though the first book was extremely well put together, very convincing in both characters and technology. This one did not suck me in the way the first did, and I thought the characters less convincing.

I'd be happy to see more, and hopefully he can be increasingly successful in what is basically generic fictional story telling. But I'd be suggesting to him that he tell stories more 'Martian'-like, using more of the NASA knowledge base, like the first manned mission to Jupiter or Saturn or ... something out there, or some permutation of manned exploration. As you say, settler stories are different, and on the evidence not where his strengths lie (IMHO).

I can see your point as to how Martian seemed more plausibly grounded in real-world technology. In that light, I read Artemis more in the way one might have read 2001 back in 1968. Clearly very futuristic, but a picture of a potentially real future, unlike, say, the fantasy world of Star Trek.

I ripped through Ready Player One when it came out. So much fun.

Then I started reading Armada when it came out. Wow, was it bad. Honestly some of the worst prose I'd ever read. The dialogue was particularly painful. Bad enough that I went back to reread RPO out of curiosity.

Got about 30 pages in and realized it's just about as bad. I just didn't realize it the first time because I was so caught up in the nostalgia and pace. I sold my signed Advanced Reader's Copy of RPO for $160 on eBay. Selling my signed first edition of Armada if anyone is interested.

I've just stopped.

Armada is bad. It's not just the prose, it's the whole underlying concept. RPO was every bit as guilty of being a deliberate nostalgia-fest for kids who grew up as nerds in the 80s, but it was at least set in a plausibly dystopian future. The backdrop of Armada is just way too over-the-top. This is like the kind of adventure novels we used to read as kids, where some random teen discovers he's mankind's only hope, except we're not fucking kids anymore, Cline.

I'm done. Going back to Clancy where I left off, which was right after Red Storm Rising. I will not be re-reading RPO, because I want to remember it as having been pretty good.

RPO the movie stunk.

again, because 2018 -- they completely changed the story to create a heroine. because #waronmen.

It didn't even make sense for Wade to win the game based on the movie. This should have been an amazing 2-3 part movie series.

But Spielberg is a horrible human being and just in it for the money. Source: every one of his movies in recent history.




I didn't think Armada the book was great or anything, i just thought it was a fun read.

I've started reading the Mitch Rapp series. I've grown very tired of Grisham books of late, he just phones them in and they are very predictable. Same with Baldacci and Cussler.

Red Storm Rising is still one of my favorite Clancy books. You still have some great reads to get to, but don't waste your time with anything published after he passed. Even the two with Jack Ryan's kid as the hero are a little on the weak side. Nobody did realistic and plausible as well as Clancy.

Cussler is 86 now... don't think he's actually doing much writing anymore. I'm a few books into Flynn's Mitch Rapp series. They're OK... entertaining, but nothing stupendous.

If you like crime/murder mystery stuff, you might try John Sanford's Prey series.

Agreed. I forced myself to watch it to the end, then wanted those two hours of my life back. It bore such little resemblance to the novel that I wonder if the screenwriter and director had even read it.



Oh, I know. This is as least my third or fourth journey through his bibliography. I stop about the time he gets into the co-authoring mode.

Funny thing that you mention Cussler. I used to devour his stuff as airplane reading but, again, lost interest right around the time he started putting his name on other peoples' novels.



And, of course, I still have And Another Thing... sitting on the shelf mocking me. I'm afraid to read it because:

A: Then it will officially be over, and

B: I'm afraid it might suck.

He was always a travel read for me too.

I remember driving to update NY with my family back as a kid, when books on tape were a new thing. Parents listened to Inca Gold--was my first book-on-tape, and it's still stuck with me today.

I've read his entire catalog up until the Issac Bell series -- they were just too blah and quit read him after the Gangster.

Baldacci has been good reading, and I like that he's local and mentions places where I live often in his novels. When I first started the finisher, i was like wtf, did i get the wrong book? but im pretty sure he was trying to get a book to movie and make $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

I'm coming to the end of the Mitch Rapp series, I think I have a book or two to go and have just started the first book after Flynn's death - too soon to determine if this has ruined it or not. The books are fun adventures, but to me they seem wrap up suddenly with little climax and I'm never quite satisfied at the end, the story just goes on to the next book. I liked the prequel books of the young Mitch Rapp best, when he first joins the CIA, shame there weren't more of those.

You guys may have already read these, but just in case -- my two favorite thriller series, by far, are Lee Child's Jack Reacher series, and Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch/Micky Haller series. Fantastic, fun reads.

I just about got done writing a response, thought "Wait, something's not right here," and then realized I was thinking about Lincoln Child.

That having been said, Utopia (2002) was a good, if simple read.

Half way through One hell of a book - heavy, dark at times, profound, thought provoking and life changing for those who read for more than entertainment.

Movie: Icarus
Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel Ep 255

Some good series I have enjoyed:

Robert Crais: Elvis Cole/Joe Pike
John D MacDonald: Travis McGee
Terry Pratchett: Discworld

Pretty much anything by Neal Stephenson, couple of favorites are Zodiac and Snow Crash.

I was reading a few pages back about The Princess Bride. The book was written (more accurately edited) by William Goldman. It is worth the read, he gives insight into the original and how it was written as social commentary of the time (can't recall just how long ago it was done).

+1

Kick ass cyber-punk novel. By the way, Altered Carbon is so much better as a book than the series, even though there is some eye-candy.

Has anyone read SevenEves? I enjoyed it but it bummed the shit out of me.

Basically the idea is that the moon is hit with an asteroid out of nowhere, cracking it in two (or more?) chunks. Humanity does the calculations and discovers that it will result in an extinction level event. Humanity bands together to send as many people into space as they can. This is for the most part using technology that exists today, so it's not ideal.

Part two is about what happens after they are in space.

Part three is when they try and return to earth. (5,000 years into the future)

Yup, I read that one a year or two ago. I agree it's somewhat depressing, but then again looking at the resiliency of individuals and groups under extreme conditions gives me hope for humanity.

If Moon was split, potentially, it would be much less of an issue than if it disappeared from our gravitational field. Lack of tides is something that nature will adjust to, same goes for shorter days, but the potential of axis shifting, and doing so with some regularity would wreck havoc on seasons and weather patterns.

In this scenario, the moon broke into multiple pieces. Over time the orbit decayed causing the pieces to fall to earth. Everything burned wiping out life (think what happened to the dinosaurs).

Not sure how I've missed this until now.



The art of editing trailers is under-appreciated.

Also, the Muppet version is actually pretty good.

Ready Player Two (book) was released today.

My wife and I are listening to it on our trip this weekend. We both have decided it is complete shit. It feels extremely rushed and forced in bad ways. The plot felt like it did not move for several hours. We will finish it, but mostly begrudgingly.

This saddens me.

2022 is shaping up to be yet another nostalgia-fest, full of "let's make movies for adults which directly connect with the movies we made for them when the were kids. Because people love that shit."

I mean... they're not wrong.

But the studios seem to be getting over their reboot / re-make phase, and are now starting to acknowledge the past as a bygone world, whose progeny are the present.

Case in point:

The year is 1995. Toy Story is in theaters. One of the more obvious underlying themes of that film is the distinction between traditional, old-school toys which were largely of a self-referential / open-world nature, and the newer toys designed merely as merchandising tie-ins to popular film & television franchises which encourage emulative rather than imaginative play.

So, in the year 2022, we look back at Toy Story, and ask "What was the movie which Andy saw 27 years ago, that made him want the Buzz Lightyear action figure?"

And so they decided to make that specific movie.

Which I think is just clever as hell.







I could sit here and listen to that specific composition of David Bowe's Starman for hours. It's pressing a well-targeted nostalgia button, exactly as intended.

I ended up finishing RP2 about 1.5 years after I started. The last few chapters of the book are the only part that is decent. It swung the story in a way I was not super expecting, that kind of sort of made of for the rest of the book being lack luster.