Book Review – War Against All Puerto Ricans

War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America's Colony by Nelson A. Denis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

At times like this I wish I believed in Hell. So many people involved in the abuse of Puerto Rico and its people deserve the direst of punishments, and yet almost all of them prospered throughout their lives and died peacefully in their beds. Nelson A. Denis does an excellent job of narrating the history of “America’s colony” using the individual stories of people and events. This leads to some repetition, which normally I’d be against. But here the repeated accounts of moments such as the Ponce Massacre provides context and perspective that a single telling couldn’t convey. Though this is as far from pleasant reading as it’s possible to get, it’s a well written, insightful account of just how awful the United States can be when it really puts in the time and effort.

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Review – The Menu

Clever and cruel by turns, this stylish production manages to eerily evade its own apparent purpose. As the chef of an ultra-exclusive restaurant sets about murdering his foodie clientele, a woman who ended up at the dinner by mistake struggles to prove that she’s not one of the victim group’s snobbish ilk. And therein lies the difficulty. Production values cost money, and a star-studded cast helps ensure return on investment. As a result, however, the movie becomes an example of the same superficial obsession with wealth that’s being slammed by the story. It’s still fun to watch, it’s just too morally ambiguous to do as much moralizing as it does. Mildly amusing

Review – Conclave

Despite its immense importance, the process of selecting the next Pope isn’t inherently all that interesting. Novelist Robert Harris stirs in a range of intrigue to spice things up and make a political point or two, but it still doesn’t amount to enough for anyone to sacrifice two hours of their lives. However, the production values make this worth a look. The sets, costumes and other visual elements are way more fun than the characters and plot. Mildly amusing

Book Review – James

James by Percival Everett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Percival Everett starts with a simple premise: what if a Black character from a Mark Twain novel was an intelligent human being with feelings and motives all his own? He transforms Twain’s Jim from Huckleberry Finn’s kind-but-witless sidekick into a man trying to escape slavery and rescue his wife and daughter. Some of the plot twists are new takes on the familiar story, while others are entirely new. I was particularly impressed by the treatment of code switching, which would make this an excellent read for anyone who doesn’t understand the concept. Despite a few third act problems, overall this is a brilliantly sad, angry and occasionally joyous view of racism in the prewar South.

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Review – Twisters

The original was one of those odd movies that’s insanely popular when it first comes out and then disappears almost entirely. This sequel skipped the first part and went straight to obscurity after some initial interest during its theatrical run. The effects are good, which is fortunate because they’re the clear star of the show. The rest of the movie is a parade of threadbare excuses for getting dangerously close to dangerous storms. Mildly amusing

Review – H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreams in the Witch House

Ah, to have no greater ambition than to be Stuart Gordon and to fall miserably short of even that modest goal. The basic ingredients are there: the expired copyright on “Dreams in the Witch House,” confusing script, gratuitous nudity. But it’s all too amateur hour to hold attention for an hour and a half. See if desperate

Book Review – Fundamentals of Character Design

Fundamentals of Character Design: How to Create Engaging Characters for Illustration, Animation & Visual Development by Publishing 3dtotal
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a well-assembled and reasonably comprehensive guide to the title topic. Particularly for aspiring sequential artists who are new to character design, the principles and practices outlined here will help get you off to a good start. The text was created by professional designers, many of whom write like designers (which is to say that the prose is often less than engaging). But the visual examples more than make up for weak spots in the text. If I could change one thing, I’d bring in a wider variety of graphic styles. Though examples clearly come from different illustrators, none of them depart too radically from Disney/Pixar styles. I should also note that borrowing this from Hoopla was a mistake. It’s set up as an eb00k rather than a comic, which makes the tiny type difficult to enlarge enough to make it readable. And the book features several galleries of suggestions for facial expression, body posture, clothing and the like. I wish I could hang onto those valuable references for longer than 20 days.

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Book Review – Manga Classics: Macbeth

Manga Classics: Macbeth - Full Original Text Edition by Crystal S. Chan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was an interesting new way to experience a Shakespeare classic. Based on my past attempts to read manga, I was concerned that the characters would prove hard to tell apart. But except for some of the supporting cast, the characters were easy to distinguish. I also liked the almost surreal quality of some of the art, providing literal depictions of the allusions in the 400-year-old prose. I also read the modern English version, which I’m not separately reviewing here beyond the observation that it was easier to follow but not as beautiful.

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Book Review – The Abominable

The Abominable by Dan Simmons
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Dan Simmons is an author with special interests, and here he gives full vent to an obsession with mountain climbing. All of the suspense scenes – and much of the rest of the narrative – get bogged down with details that non-experts will need a stack of climbing manuals, equipment catalogs and guides to the geography of Mount Everest to have any hope of following. The fussy details combined with the constant peril and physical agony of high altitude climbing make for difficult reading. Further, act three is rife with disappointments that can’t be described without major spoilers. Disappointing. I used to love Simmons’s writing, but I fear at this point he’s lost me.

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Review – The Land That Time Forgot

I remember taking these movies ever so seriously when I first saw them. Of course I was a pre-teen at the time. All these years later I still find them fun in a crappy sort of way, though perhaps those with no associated sense of childhood nostalgia will react as positively. This is a sequel to The People That Time Forgot, and it completely lives up (or down) to the standards of the original. Mildly amusing

Review – At the Earth’s Core

To this day I wonder what Peter Cushing might have accomplished if he’d gotten a crack at better roles. He was talented. He had good screen presence. And yet more often than not he ended up in crap like this. Edgar Rice Burroughs gets blamed for this silly story about a giant drilling machine that accidentally bores a hole to a subterranean realm in which primitive people are ruled by huge, telekinetic rubber birds. Mildly amusing