A Descent into Dullness

Brad Pitt seems to be finding a bit of a new niche as a WW-II guy.  Here as a Canadian pilot-turned British spy-pretending at start to be French.  Cotillard is pretty good throughout, but I kind of would like to see the story told entirely from her perspective.  As it is she really only gets to do some heavy acting right at the end.  I also would be interested in a movie about the character of Pitt's sister, an a British officer openly living as a lesbian during the Blitz.

Written by the Coen brothers, directed by Speilberg, starring Tom Hanks.  They'd have to actively try to fuck up that movie.  Which they don't.  They maybe push a little too hard on the This Scene is Important bits, but nothing that really detracts.  The titular spy exchange only takes up the second half, with the first being the trial of the Russian agent.  With Hanks as the Lawful Good Lawyer vs. the System that Just Wants to Hang a Spy Because the Mob is Scared.  I especially liked the little scene of school children terrorfied to tears by the nucleur war filmstrip.  Also while their are other actors in this, the movie is pretty much owned by Hanks and Mark Rylance as Rudolf Abel

I haven't seen all the movies in the franchise, but I have to wonder.  In ANY of them does Ethan Hunt NOT get disavowed, declared a traitor, hunted by his own allies, etc etc?  Anyway, fun action movie.  None of the big sequences matches the last movies tower sequence, not even the underwater computer hacking.  But I'm pretty certain, unlike the last one, I'll actually be able to remember the basic plot in a month.  Mostly because it seems to be a couple spare James Bond concepts mooshed all together.  Still a nice little giant budget action movie...

Honestly the movie is worth it just to watch Colin Firth berserker-murder what is totally not a branch of the Westboro Baptist Church shit-heads.  The rest of the movie is pretty enjoyable in a over-the-top super-spy kind of way.  And dude who is the lead is pretty charming and he and Firth play well off each other...

This was pretty damn great.  Especially as a comics fan.  Non-cheesy versions of both Batroc AND non-human Arnim Zola.  Great hero spots for Fury, Black Widow and even Hill.  I love the chemistry between Cap and Falcon.  And Chris Evans just kills it.  Also I liked the real quick shout-out to Dr. Strange and the Pulp Fiction call-out toward the end.  Enjoyed the post-credit Greater Story scene with Von Strucker and the Maximoff twins.  Didn't stay for the second non-story building clip, which was apparantly the Winter Soldier visiting the Captain America exhibit at the Smithsonian...

Looking over my November list I'm only seeing four free-range short stories.  Andy Merino's grotesque transformation story of a pioneer journey in the Oregon Trail Diary of Willa Porter.  Then Benjamin Rosenbaum's bureaucracy and social media during the zombie apocalypse in Feature Development for Social Networking.  Su Yee Lin has a dreamscape style quest in 13 Steps in the Underworld.  And finally Michael Swanwick has another of his "Mongolian Wizard" stories set in a fantasy alternate history World War with House of Dreams...

Actually started the month with Paolo Bacigalupi's YA zombies & the meat packing industry book, Zombie Baseball Beatdown.  Followed by volume 50 of the Grantville Gazette (edited by Paula Godlett) one of the less memorable and slight collections.  I honestly had to go back and look to remember any of the stories in it...

Veteran mystery writer Janet Evanovich teams with long time tv and novel mystery writer Lee Goldberg with the Heist.  The pair craft a competent and entertaing (if overused concept) cop and crook team up to take down a bigger Bad...

American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett is creepy and gripping mix of small town Americana, Cthulhu-style alien entities and dysfunctional families...

Another entry in Baen's "Ring of Fire" e-books, 1635: Music & Murder by David Carrico collects the various Gazette stories that lead into 1636: the Devil's Opera.  I do like the "modern" music influencing the downtime art forms stories, so it was nice to have them collected in one spot...

Gail Carriger's "Finishing School" was a new one for me.  The two books in the series so far, Etiquette & Espionage and Courtesies & Conspiracies combine Victorian-era steampunk, vampires, werewolves, espionage and girl's finishing schools...

Finally got around to Suzanne Collin' 'pre-"Hunger Games" book Gregor the Overlander.  Turns out its the start of a kidlet series, of the hidden magical world stumbled into by a "normal" hero.  I will give Collins this, she had me crying over the heroic death of giant cockroach.  And roaches freak me the fuck out, so high bar there...

I was less than impressed with the pair of horror novels by Joey Compeau.  One Bloody Thing After Another feels unfinished, like it ends about 3/4 of the way thru the story.  And I could not bring myself to wade thru the wholesale slaughter and murder of kids with the Summer is Ended & We are Not Saved...

I was happily surprised by Drew Hayes' Super Powereds and Super Powereds 2.  He writes the books one chapter at a time and posts them on his site, then publishes the whole thing when they're done.  I've been avoiding checking the individual chapers for volume 3 as I want to read it as a whole.  But you can actually see his writing craft improve chapter by chapter.  I'll also admit I picked up the first one hoping it was by the still-missed late Drew Hayes of Poison Elves.  Sadly, no...

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller's latest "Liaden" book, Trade Secret, took me a few chapters to get hooked into.  Mostly trying to recall which sub-story line and short fiction it was mainly connect into...

Sharpe's Prey by Bernard Cornwell takes place in 1807 and Denmark, in between the India and Spain campaigns for Wellington and Sharpe.  Not one of the most memorable in the series, but picking it up filled one of the holes in my collection of the series...

I've been mixing together reading the Frank L. Baum "Oz" series after getting a complete omnibus e-edition and picking up the recent Marvel comics' adaptations by Eric Shanowar and Skottie Young.  For November I read the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the Marvelous Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz.  The expanded Oz setting is a trip and a half...

The Way We Fall by Megan Crewe is another YA/End of Civilization book.  Its also a touching, melancholy and yet hopeful book.  Crewe's makes a great choice in focusing on a small isolated coastal island struggling with the civilization-breaking plague outbreak.  I need to get the sequel sometime soon...

Beta read another book for my friend Joe Selby.  Family Jewels is a future scifi/noir mash-up with detectives and teleportation and planets owned by decendents of todays mega-wealthy and a jewel heist.  I had a few quibbles with some parts of the set-up, but as always I wish Joe had a publisher so more people could get a chance to read his work...

You're Jonah Yu is a Choose Your Own Adventure book by Jeffrey C. Wells, that ties into his and Shaennon K. Garrity's webcomic Skin Horse...

And finally, ended the month with a reread of Lois McMaster Bujold's Captain Vorpatrill's Alliance.  I just really like this and a Civil Campaign and just can't get enough of either...

Total: 21

The Campaign: Beyond Will Ferrel punching a baby I wasn't expecting to find this funny. But it was and touching at times. I was honestly pleasantly surprised by this. Plus Will Ferrel does punch a baby. Also a puppy...

The Long Good Friday: Bob Hoskins is a London crime boss having a weekend party to convince some American investors to help him with his big, legitimate real estate project. And then someone starts killing his people and blowing up his stuff...

Salmon Fishing in Yemen: The title kind of sums it up. Yemen royal wants to build up a river and then stock it with salmon. Quietly funny with lots of great acting work...

Frankenweenie: Boy loves dog. Boy loses dog. Boy plays God in violation of all natural law and gets back dog. Later more dead pet related mayhem...

The Bourne Legacy: Doesn't really bring anything new, but I like seeing Renner as an action super-spy. Makes me think a Hawkeye movie is possible. And remembering Renner from the Unusuals makes me think a Fraction version Hawkeye movie is possible...

The Devil's Double: Based on the true story of Uday Hussein's body double. Reminded me a lot of the Last King of Scotland, as again you've got a basically decent person who gets shackled into the life of sociopathic monster...

An excellent Cold War-era old-school spy movie. Plus its got like half the male actors in all of England in it. Julius Cesar! Al Capone! Sinestro! The Horned King! Dracula! All working for British intelligence...

A 1965 classic of the espionage genre based on the John Le Carre novel and starring Richard Burton. Burton plays Alec Leamas who is tasked with one last dangerous mission before he can retire. He must pose as a defecting agent in order to set up the downfall of a high ranking agent of East Germany. But in the end the cost of serving crown and country may be too high for him...

Ok, first off, thats still a stupid title. Even allowing that the new SPECTRE (as revealed about the midpoint of the movie) calls itself Quantum, still dumb. But other than that I found this new Bond movie even better than the last. Some reviewers say that its too "Bourne" like with its action sequences. I agree with that, in that its action sequences (like those in the Bourne franchise) are really good. But how is that bad? This is fucking BOND. This isn't The Good German or The Quiet American. Have they not SEEN other movies in the franchise? And yes they have much of the same frenetic pace and physically jarring moves that the Bourne movies brought. But I think thats just because that franchise set the bar for what action has to aim for. And Quantum of Solace hits the mark by far on that one...

I also like both Bond girls more than Vesper in the last movie. And I think in-between the action, this latest Bond actually gave both Dench and Craig more to work with as actors. So excellent movie...