So being one of those curmudgeonly holdout types who still receives discs in the mail from Netflix (or Qwikster or DVD.com or whatever it is these days) means that not only does my wife get to fall asleep during the latest blockbusters, but also during weird indie movies and older movies that I never got around to watching back in the day. For instance, this one:
So this week, we (meaning mostly me) watched “Ready Player One”, Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of the book by the same name. As he has done in the past, Spielberg took a book that was kind of so-so and made a humdinger of a thriller out of it. And if it maybe peaks right at the beginning, during this epic race/chase through the streets of New York (one of the best I’ve seen in years), well, I can forgive him for setting a bar he can’t subsequently clear. Because any movie that includes a Holy Hand Grenade is a movie I have to love.
So those who are familiar with the sorts of other things I’ve done “not a review” entries on, not to mention the sorts of things I write, and who also are familiar with the show Preacher* on AMC, will likely not be surprised to learn that I’ve never missed a single episode of that unhinged horror/comedy/fantasy/bizarro-land production.
This is not the main character of Preacher, but it is my favorite character. So you get to see Cassidy instead of the Preacher himself.
Last week we (meaning I) finally got caught up on the current* state of “StarWars” by watching The Last Jedi, AKA The One Where Luke Is Old And Grouchy And Chewbacca Eats A Porg.
So late last month, my novel A Flock of Crows is Called a Murder (or, as we lazy folks refer to it, Crows) picked up a review over on Amazon.com. That makes two (count ’em!) Amazon reviews for this book since it was published in 2002. At this rate I’ll be hitting the magic number of, oh, say, 50 reviews, somewhere just shy of halfway through the millennium. Of course by then everyone will be reading their books under the sea on their waterproof devices, and Crows will be classified as science fiction because it takes place on dry land, but hey. Genres shift.
As 2017 came to a close, so too did our getting caught up on all of the available seasons of “Game of Thrones”. It only took us about five months to get through them, because that’s how we binge around here: At a deliberate pace. Sort of like how long it takes the Night King to move south from Hardhome while everyone else flits around the continent on Air Westeros, or however they do it.
Since my wife got hooked by the show, she’s been staying awake for pretty much the entire episode each time — at least until season 7, when the episode lengths started to approach the running times of short movies, which is pushing it on how long she can stay awake even when watching something she likes. But she never stopped with the pithy observations about what’s transpiring on-screen, and I never stopped scurrying off to write them down for later use******, helpfully arranging them by season, so that those who may not be caught up will know when to stop. Because …
So this week we (mostly me) watched “Spider-Man: Homecoming“, AKA “The One That Does Have Tony Stark In It, But Not Enough Of Him, Despite All The Posters That Make It Look Like He Is A Major Character”.