By COYLE NEAL I can’t claim that these are the best books of 2012, but they are the ones that I read that stand out the most from my Goodreads list. Fiction The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak: This young adult novel explores the power of words through a compelling plot narrated by Death himself. [...]
By KENDRICK KUO Since it is the thing to do on blogs such as ours, I’ve compiled a list of my favorite books that I read in 2012. This does not mean these are books were published this year, but that I read them sometime over the past 12 months. How do I decide what’s [...]
Review of Django Unchained, Directed by Quentin Tarantino By KENDRICK KUO Django Unchained is everything you would expect from a Tarantino film. Much in the same vein as Inglorious Basterds, this story is a historical one. Instead of Nazi Germany, it is set in the antebellum South. If you liked Inglorious Basterds, I would reckon [...]
Review of The Polar Express, Directed by Robert Zemeckis By PAUL D. MILLER The Polar Express (2004) is the perfect expression of what I hate about Christmas. And by “Christmas,” I mean, of course, the simpering, saccharine celebration of objectless “faith” in nothing in particular—a collection of groundless and ephemeral good feelings we artificially and [...]
Review of Cirque du Soleil, Directed by James Cameron By COYLE NEAL James Cameron’s Cirque du Soleil is a regular Pandora’s box of titanic proportions. It is a masterpiece of cinematic excellence and a film course all rolled into one. Merely watching this movie will teach you all about what makes a great film. As I [...]
Review of Jack Reacher, Directed by Christopher McQuarrie By COYLE NEAL Tom Cruise’s latest movie is both unfortunately and fortunately timed. It is unfortunately timed because of how it opens—with a sniper randomly shooting people in Pittsburgh. Suspect James Barr is quickly caught, and before being put in a coma by a brutal prison beating, [...]
Review of Les Misérables, Directed by Tom Hooper By ALEXIS NEAL After years of imprisonment and hard labor, one-time thief Jean Valjean is finally released from prison, only to discover that, for an ex-con life on the outside is harder than he expected. When the Bishop of Digne unexpectedly takes pity on him, Valjean promptly [...]
Review of This Is 40, Directed by Judd Apatow By KENDRICK KUO Pete (Paul Rudd) got Debbie (Leslie Mann) pregnant, got married, and a few years later, they have two kids and they are 40 years old. Well…Debbie thinks she is 38, but later we discover she is actually 40. This Is 40 is a [...]
Review of Miracle on 34th Street, Directed by George Seaton By ALEXIS NEAL Young Susan Walker is an intensely practical child. Her mother Doris has only ever told her the truth—her childhood has been uniformly free of such frivolous and fictitious nonsense as fairy stories, happily-ever-afters, make believe, and most importantly (for our purposes, anyway): [...]
A Review of Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare By PAUL D. MILLER I played a bit part in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in my sixth-grade English class (I was Peter Quince). My freshman year of high school I saw a full production—the first live Shakespeare play I ever saw—and fell completely in love with [...]
A Review of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Directed by Peter Jackson By PAUL D. MILLER I previouslyblogged about the surprising darkness and pessimism in J.R.R. Tolkien’s book The Hobbit. That book is often mistakenly called a children’s book, and even though there is nothing childlike about its tales of genocidal war and cynical realpolitik, [...]
Review of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Directed by Peter Jackson By PAUL D. MILLER It is hard to remember how firmly entrenched the conventional wisdom was that The Lord of the Rings was unfilmable. A disastrous animated attempt in 1978, stuffed full of 70’s cheese, covered just half the story. The film only [...]
Review of Amélie, Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet By KENDRICK KUO I’ve known about Amélie (2001) for a long time, but only recently decided to sit down and watch it after a co-worker of mine said it was one of her favorite movies. This French film follows a woman named Amélie Poulain from her mother’s tragic [...]
Review of White Christmas, Directed by Michael Curtiz By ALEXIS NEAL Once upon a time, Bob Wallace and Phil Davis were in the Army together. On Christmas Eve in 1944, Davis (an aspiring performer) saved the life of Wallace (an established Broadway star) and the rest, as they say, is history. After the war, the [...]
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