Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.
42/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Death has made appearances in every Discworld book so far (my understanding is that this continues throughout the series), but this is the first where Death is more of a central character — though most of what we learn is through Death’s apprentice, Mort. A neat way to really start to flesh out Pratchett’s cosmology and how he approaches Death (and death) on the Discworld.
The Last Starfighter (1984): ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Sure, the effects don’t match what can be done today, but they still perfectly capture the state of the art for the time, and the story is still a lot of fun. Plus, you have to love seeing Robert Preston in full Prof. Harold Hill mode once again.
Mary Poppins (1964): ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Always a wonderful film to watch, but it was especially fun watching it in our hotel room with a view of Tower Bridge after spending a couple days wandering around London. The painting used for the opening and closing credits could almost have been painted using the roof of our hotel as a vantage point!
Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997): ⭐️
Wow, that was bad. I didn’t even go in expecting very much, and it didn’t even close to meeting my lackluster expectations. But it was an entertaining choice to watch while on an ocean voyage, so, one star for existing and giving us something to snark at one evening.
41/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Standout stories in this issue include “Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200” by R.S.A. Garcia, “The Ghasts” by Lavie Tidhar, and “The Music of the Siphorophenes” by C. L. Polk.
Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001): ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Late ’90s/early ’00s Hugh Grant is always fun (Hugh at his peak Hugh Grant-i-ness), and this (along with one other) was a perfect choice to watch on an evening in during our New York to London voyage.
Late ’90s/early ’00s Hugh Grant is always fun (Hugh at his peak Hugh Grant-i-ness), and this (along with one other) was a perfect choice to watch on an evening in during our New York to London voyage.
Strange Days (1995): ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Almost 30 years later, and this still packs a hell of a punch, and is still amazingly topical for the present day. I remember when this came out being pretty convinced that, save the sci-fi device, it was quite possibly an eerily accurate prediction of where we’d be societally at the turn of the century. Turns out that while the SQuID hardware still isn’t a thing, the rest was somewhere between right on point and just a couple decades too early. Plus an all-around stellar cast (I mean, come on: Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Lewis, Michael Wincott, Tom Sizemore, William Fichtner, Vincent D’Onofrio, Glenn Plummer, and Angela Bassett at her badass best, all in one film?) and a killer soundtrack.
40/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
More Discworld silliness, this time following the eighth child of an eighth child who, for very good reasons, is asking just why women can’t be wizards. Something of a mid-80’s take on feminism in fantasy literature.
39/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I’m using our vacation time to focus on eBooks, including finally diving into my ever-growing backlog of SF/F magazines. For me, the standout stories in this most recent issue of Clarkesworld are Stephen Case’s “Every Seed is a Prayer (And Your World is a Seed)” and M.J. Pettit’s “Empathetic Ear”.
