Review - Jack Reacher 9

One Shot by Lee Child

Plot:

A Gulf War vet goes postal worker and kills five people from a parking garage. The evidence he leaves behind is overwhelming, but when he is arrested he protests his innocence. He asks for Jack Reacher, but Reacher's now a drifter and they can't find him.

Good things:

Reading the bad guy instructing his minions to put the scare on Reacher, and thinking, Boy, you're about to get your ass handed you.

Well-paced, somewhat addictive prose.

After a couple of misfires mid-series Child appears to have gotten back on form.

Bad things:

Guessing what was going on fairly early on and not being far wrong. I had the what, but didn't quite have the why sorted.

Ends rather abruptly; 'Then Reacher left. The End.'

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50 book challenge 2006:

1 - 10
11 = The Dresden Files: 1. Storm Front by Jim Butcher [review]
12 = The Malazan Book of the Fallen: 4. House of Chains by Steven Erikson [review]
13 = The Darkwar: 1. Flight of the Nighthawks by Raymond E. Feist [review]
14 = Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman [review]
15 = One Shot by Lee Child

Next = The Malazan Book of the Fallen: 5. Midnight Tides by Steven Erikson

Review - Constantine

Constantine

--Dude!
--What?
--Hell sucks!
--Yes really!

Plot:

Ted Theodore Logan can, like, totally see angels and demons and stuff. He's trying to send as many of the demons back to hell as possible so that he doesn't go there himself.

Someone should tell him that all he has to do is challenge the grim reaper to a game of twister. Or battleships.

Good things:

I don't care about fan-boy outrage. I haven't read Hellblazer, so you can cry 'Canon-rape' all you want. This was good pop-corn entertainment.

Rachel Weisz.

The creepy-crawlie demon thing is quite cool.

Bad things:

Some of the supporting characters are weakly drawn, particularly the cab driver.

Increasingly Amusing Tales of Car Ownership - Chapter 8

The story so far:
Chapter 3: Only one calamity to go
Chapter 4: Only one wing mirror to go
Chapter 5: Linkage
Chapter 6: M.O.T.
Chapter 7: Flu

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Chapter 8: Pimp my Metro

I hoped, when I started calling these posts 'Increasingly Amusing Tales', that I would run out of incidents worthy of the title. I hoped that my driving life would be dull and boring from here on. No such luck.

You may recall that almost five weeks ago, I announced that the head gasket had blown in the Silver (and Red) Machine (see link to chapter 7 above). Today I finally retook possession of my Metro. In the garage's defense, it hasn't taken them five weeks to fix my car. They have taken three weeks (they actually started the work on Wednesday, 5 April 2006).

On the evening of the 5th I phoned the garage to find out if my car was ready, and was told that 'the job was more complicated than we expected'. Since then, every time I have called them, I have been told the work would take a couple more days, with no one actually saying why. Whilst I've been waiting for the return of my vehicle, we've come up with the following possible scenarios to explain the delay:

1 = Someone fucked up.
2 = Someone has taken a shine to the Silver (and Red) Machine and is reluctant to part with it.
3 = Westwood is pimping my ride.

Of the three, I think option 1. is the most likely. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that they are sticking to their original quotation. If it had merely been the case of encountering more things wrong with the car, then they would have telephoned me and quoted the price for additional work. The thinking is that someone's dropped something or broken something, and they've had to order a replacement part.

That would explain a delay, but I'm not sure it explains three weeks worth. Unless of course the replacement part was made of solid gold or something.

Option 2. doesn't sound very likely to me. Even I haven't taken that much of a shine to it (not after all these increasingly amusing tales).

Whilst option 3. would be quite amusing, it would probably be a wasted investment as the car was only worth £500 when I bought it.

Review - Anansi Boys

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Good things: A good lighthearted read, humorous, but with touches of darkness that anyone familiar with Gaiman's other work will be familiar with.

The blending of mythology and real-life work well, for all that these are basically the same ideas that formed the basis of American Gods (Gaiman's previous novel).

Bad things: Didn't find myself enjoying this as much as I enjoyed American Gods.

The deleted scene. WTF is that about?

The character of Rosie is a bit 'Meh?'

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See also:
Sandman 4 (review of The Sandman: Season of Mists, February 2006)
Sandman 3 (review of The Sandman: Dream Country, January 2006)
My other mother (review of Coraline, December 2004)

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50 book challenge 2006:

1 - 10
11 = The Dresden Files: 1. Storm Front by Jim Butcher [review]
12 = The Malazan Book of the Fallen: 4. House of Chains by Steven Erikson [review]
13 = The Darkwar: 1. Flight of the Nighthawks by Raymond E. Feist [review]
14 = Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Next = One Shot by Lee Child

Injury - Doctor

I saw the doctor today [entry]. He agreed with the hop-in clinic's diagnosis of soft tissue damage, but has advised that I get it x-rayed to be certain that the bone wasn't broken. If not then we'll look at what is causing the reoccurence of the injury.

I'll go over to the hospital tomorrow before work to get it x-rayed. I've been told that it will take two weeks for the results of the x-ray to come back; surprising because on television x-rays always seem to develop faster than polaroids.

St George's Day

Happy St. George's Day all.

I've spent the day building bookcases and sorting my room out. Not particularly exciting, but I did, at least, do it whilst wearing my England rugby shirt.

Review - Heist movies

I have watched two heist movies recently -- Inside Man and, apparently, Ocean's Tw[1] -- and I have to admit that I would be hard pressed to imagine two more different movies.

I'll start with Ocean's Tw, because that raised my hackles enough to blog this afternoon.

This movie is not as clever as it thinks it is. It's overly complicated, pretentious, and disjointed, lacking any of the charm or dazzle of the original remake. As far as I can tell, it's an excuse for Clooney, Pitt and a few other A-listers to go on a jolly in Amsterdam and Rome. Fair enough, but if I'm going to watch someone else's holiday videos I at least expect to know the person.

Where the heist in Ocean's 11 was clever and well-executed, the heist in the sequel[2] is badly conceived and even more badly explained. Having Clooney say over drinks, 'Oh, yeah, we actually stole the easter egg a couple of days before we were supposed to. Haha, I am the greetest', just doesn't cut it. What the hell did I bother watching for the last hour for then? Damnit.

The movie lacks any chemistry, and both Clooney and Pitt phone their roles in. The attempt to recreate the romantic tension from the first film -- this time between Pitt and Zeta-Jones -- falls on its arse. Frankly, I don't care.

There are a couple of moments of comedy, and the Julia Roberts lookalike skit works kinda well[3], but for the most part they are buried under all the mediocrity.

The news that Ocean's Thirteen is in pre-production fills me with complete Indifference.

In contrast, Inside Man, Spike Lee's latest, is everything that it Ocean's Tw wishes it was. This film is as clever as it thinks it is. It's well written and directed, and the moments of humour manage to work without detracting any from the tension of the heist. These are characters that you can care for, and by the end of the film the viewer is left feeling entertained, not cheated.

Of the two, the Inside Man will get my vote everytime.

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[1] The small television set in the lounge cuts most of a regular size picture up, so anything in widescreen gets some intense peripheral editing. Gah.
[2] In fact three heists, although if you blink at the wrong time you'll miss the second.
[3] Although Willis just looks uncomfortable, and also phones his small cameo in.

Photographs - Easter

Just uploaded some more photographs to flickr. They can be found here.

Oh . . . dear . . . god

Easter goodness:

I took two extra days off work[1], so I could avoid the traffic by not travelling on either of the bank holidays. Hah. It worked in theory, apparently the 10⁶ caravans I passed got stuck behind were just the scouting party.

I suppose I should be grateful for that, at least.

On Good Friday I head up to the 'club for the Salcombe vs. Exiles match. First time I've made that one in a few years. Second half struggles to compete for my attention with the fact that the sun is shining. Loses.

Go into town. Go drinking with my brother's friends[2]; I seem to have drunk enough for them to make sense to me. Coops' girlfriend comes and rescues me and we go down to the Fort. Coops tells me we've had enough to drink. We have another couple of pints.

I can't remember getting home.

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Saturday, I watch Inside Man with Tris[3].

Go out in the evening with Hels and Tris. Hels is boring. Tris is Tris. Everyone else sucks. Evening is a bust.

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Sunday. Salcombe RFC's annual 7s tournament. Drinking beer all day with Coops and, surprisingly, Grim Son Ross. Hazy memories of most of the day, although I have a slow-motion flashback of dropping a pint by the pool table. I decline the invitation to go to Fusion². Probably for the best, as Coops later tells me that it was as much of a bust as Saturday night was[4].

Go home. Fall asleep on sofa. Wake up parents when I wake up at 4am and stumble to bed.

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Monday. Recovery. Three days drinking has given me a wicked smart case of the delerium tremens. I'm so dehydrated, I don't have to drink water, I can just absorb it through my skin. I despair when I look inside my wallet. Sleep, sleep, and sleep.

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[1] Thursday and Tuesday
[2] Dan, Dan, and Ali-with-Highlights. The observent among you will have noticed that two of my brother Dan's friends appear to have his name. They're not very original with the naming of children in Devon.
[3] Review to follow.
[4] Hah. That's payback for being rubbish on Sat, ginger sideburns. "See, J.D., this is what goes around. And this? (shows other hand) Is what comes around."

Review - Darkwar 1

The Darkwar: 1. Flight of the Nighthawks by Raymond E. Feist

Good things: It's good, just not great.
Has good forward momentum, after a slightly slow start.
Well written action, as you'd come to expect.

Bad things: It appears that Feist's editor took a holiday when this book was finished. There are a noticeable amount of typos and grammatical errors. Worse still are the inconsistencies. At one point we learn that Caleb and Marie were lovers before Marie met her husband; later we are told that they knew each other whilst Marie was married, but didn't get it on until after her husband had died. Later still, Nakor talks to someone he left outside the room he is in. There were others (by the halfway point I had spotted four or five), but as I have already bitched about this in my livejournal, I will stop there.
The Nature-of-Evil discussion. Yes, I understand it's necessary, but just once I'd like Nakor to shut the hell up.
Kaspar is, as feared, not as ruthless or cunning as he was when he was a heel.
A lot of time spent introducing two new characters when, at the end, their role is actually quite small. I can only assume that they -- along with one or two others -- are going to play a bigger role over the next two books.

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See also:
Conclave of Shadows 3 (review of Conclave of Shadows: 3. Exile's Return, January 2006)

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50 book challenge 2006:

1 - 10
11 = The Dresden Files: 1. Storm Front by Jim Butcher [review]
12 = The Malazan Book of the Fallen: 4. House of Chains by Steven Erikson [review]
13 = The Darkwar: 1. Flight of the Nighthawks by Raymond E. Feist

Next = Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Lucky stranger

I finally registered with a doctor (having only been in the Concrete Kingdom of Swindon for three and a half years), so today I have a new patient appointment. I haven't had one of these in . . . well, ever, I guess. I was registered with the same surgery all the way through childhood, and I never actually went to my university doctor so I never needed to register[1].

The prospect of peeing into a small tube and handing it to a complete stranger is very exciting.

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[1] I guess I was a model patient when I was at uni, because I never actually troubled my doctor. I have only registered now because I want to get this damn ankle [entry] sorted.

Review - Bad Boys II

Bad Boys II

Psuedo-pull quotes:
-- Bad Boys II
-- Bad script, bad script, what you gonna do?/What you gonna do when the sequel's due?
-- Succeeds in that Will Smith has already set a benchmark-for-crap with Men In Black II. Bad Boys, whilst still being overlong and devoid of chemistry, looks like classic cinema when compared with Smith's other unwanted sequel.

Review - Malazan Book of the Fallen 4

The Malazan Book of the Fallen: 4. House of Chains by Steven Erikson

I think I've gushed enough about the Malazan books before to avoid having to gush again (see the link below to my review of 3. Memories of Ice). This is more of the same and it does not disappoint.

The only miniscule criticism I have is that two of my favourite characters from 2. Deadhouse Gates made only cameo appearances. Guess it just goes to show that you can't please all of a person all of the time.

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See also:
Our memories (review of 3. Memories of Ice, June 2005)

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50 book challenge 2006:

1 - 10
11 = The Dresden Files: 1. Storm Front by Jim Butcher [review]
12 = The Malazan Book of the Fallen: 4. House of Chains by Steven Erikson

Next = The Darkwar: 1. Flight of the Nighthawks by Raymond E. Fiest

Review - LXG

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

This film can be summed up in four words:

'Tom Sawyer, secret service!'

Thanks, but no thanks.

Nobody likes a smart arse

Dan just got his personal license through, making him a bona-fide licensee.

Congratulations bro!