It's not a f$#@ing compass!!!

Yes, I still read books from the "Young Adults" section.  Deal with it.

If you've seen the idiotically named, and not particularly well done movie The Golden Compass, this is the book that movie was (very) loosely based on.

Northern Lights as it is properly titled (as it contains not one single compass of a golden nature) is the first segment of the His Dark Materials trilogy. Personally, I saw the movie first, not having heard of the books. The movie was, well, "meh", but I'd heard good things about the book so decided to give it a shot. Even with a good movie, one expertly adapted, they very rarely live up to the experience of the source material. In this case, it's really not even close. The book is considerably better than the movie, and I'd highly recommend it if you found yourself enjoying the likes of the Harry Potter series or Lord of the Rings, etc.

Some might wonder what this "golden compass" bit is all about.  Well you see, in the story, there is this device in the story that could, from a distance, in the dark, squinting, and looking the wrong direction, while drunk, might possibly be mistaken for a golden compass. It doesn't function as a navigational device. Some might say it's a "moral" compass. They're reaching. What I think happened was, some executives in a meeting said, "Hey, we've got to give this name some pizazz because we're dealing with a severely mentally deficient movie going public in the U.S. and we need something flashy for our movie posters." These would probably be the same folks who decided "sorcerer" worked better than "philosopher" for the first Harry Potter book. In short, the folks in Hollywood who make these decisions are more or less outwardly saying they think we're all idiots.  I'll stop ranting now and get back to the review.

The story centers around Lyra Belacqua, essentially an orphan, and her journeys to the far north in search of her kidnapped friend and her imprisoned uncle. Also woven into the plot is "dust," a substance pouring into Earth from other dimensions. It's well written with a really good story to it and it fills in many gaps left out of the movie as well as providing a proper ending that the movie skipped altogether. It's a great fantasy adventure novel and well worth a read.

Quick editor's note here: According to this wikipedia entry, the original title did make reference to golden compasses of the artistic drawing variety. In that sense, perhaps some of my ranting was unwarranted, but at the same time, at least this first book's contents really didn't make any reference to such devices (at least none that I can recall), so ultimately I'm left in the same place, wondering where this came about and why.

I felt like I'd seen this before

Déjà Vu brings Denzel "Get your f$@#in' hands off me" Washington, determined ATF agent and crime scene analyzer savant, face to face with Jim "Jesus" Caviezel, a really, really bad guy here...possibly as far as one can get from his portrayal of Jesus.

The movie opens with a ferry boat in Mississippi exploding, killing hundreds. Denzel's on the scene and on the case in short order, piecing together the many parts of this puzzle. His expert abilities are identified early on by Val Kilmer who just happens to be a guy working on a top secret project involving the manipulation of time. We are of course told may "rules" about such experiments. We can look backward, but cannot alter anything, our actions are not detected by people in the past...that sort of business. Are these rules actually true, or just guesses??? But wait, far worse than hundreds dying on the ferry is the death of a rather attractive woman. This gets Denzel extra motivated, and the hunt is on for the bad ferry boat blower-upper-guy and also for some way to save the fair maiden.

I seem to have made the plot sound pretty hokey, but don't be fooled by my literary ineptitude. This was a pretty good movie. The way they bring the mystery together is pretty interesting to watch and the acting's pretty good to boot.

Hard on the stomach

No Country for Old Men is the kind of movie that causes stomach cramps. It's a very serious, very intense movie that pulls you to the edge of your seat and keeps you there throughout.

The plot is this.  Llewelyn Moss (Brolin) is out hunting and stumbles upon the remnants of a drug deal gone bad.  Seeing a satchel of cash with no apparent living owner, he decides to adopt it. Anton Chigurh (Bardem) is a very cold blooded assassin sent to find the missing dough, and the Sheriff (Jones) is piecing the whole mess together while the bodies continue to pile up.

The acting is superb, the cinematography is well done, and the story is well paced and brilliantly written.

One word of caution though. It's a fairly violent film, and the violence is often of the cold calculated variety, making it disturbing and gut wrenching to watch.

In F@#%in' Bruges!

According to imdb.com trivia, they drop the F-bomb a whopping 126 times in 107 minutes, for an average of 1.18 bombs per minute. You may be thinking the same thing I did. "This must be an awesome movie!" 

No...that's not what I was thinking, I was thinking "Somebody actually kept count, then did the math? Wow, I just write lame reviews that nobody reads."

I digress...

Progressive use of french aside, In Bruges was a really good movie. It's got a good bit of comedy interspersed with some nice dramatic moments. The story follows a couple of hitmen (Farrell, Gleeson) who're laying low in Bruges, Belgium on boss's (Fiennes) orders after a job gone awry back in England. The setting (Bruges) is quite lovely, the script is well written and well acted, and, as an added bonus, it has dwarf humor. Really, how can ya beat that??? Watch this sometime.

Accurate Hype

So many things could've gone wrong with The Departed. These kinds of movies come along, where you have all this excitement built up, and of course there's the all-star ensemble, but then you see it, and sure, it might be reasonably entertaining, but it lets you down. It's just not that engaging. (Oceans 11, I'm looking at you)

This is not that kind of movie.

This flick is a real masterpiece. The acting is superb. The story, beautifully written. The presentation is brilliantly done. This is the kind of film that allows you to fall for the other over-hyped films on the off chance you get to see something like this.

The story goes something like this. Nicholson is a bad guy.  No, scratch that, he's THE bad guy. Sort of a mob kingpin if you will. The law, of course, wants to bring him down. DiCaprio and Damon are both cops.  DiCaprio, a wash-out, who's ultimately given the task of infiltrating Nicholson's group. Damon, an officer whose star is rising, but who happens to be a plant on the force, and who ultimately answers to Nicholson. That's the set up, and from there, it's a tale of intrigue to discover who'll uncover what about whom and when. There's nary an uninteresting moment, and we're treated to twists and turns aplenty.

This is a brilliant film.  With a tightly scripted story and brilliant performances, I highly recommend giving this a viewing.

25 years ago

I knew nothing more of 1984 going into it than little things like "Big Brother is watching you," and a basic feel for the plot as being about life in a complete totalitarian police state.  From these mere scraps, I had ideas in mind about how this book would end.  My ideas were wrong.

The story, set in the far off future of 1984, follows Winston Smith, a cog in the bureaucratic machine of Oceania (one of three large conglomerated countries that dominate the planet). Due to pervasive technology and comprehensive social programs, big brother literally is watching.  Among the cultural levels that matter (aka. people "lucky" enough to be in or working in support of the ruling party), homes are equipped with telescreens...2-way televisions through which you receive your daily communications and through which you can be watched and listened to, 24x7.  Should you be the kind of person who talks in their sleep, you stand a good chance of meeting an unhappy end. Part of the education system is a constant and thorough program encouraging kids to turn in their parents should they overhear any disparaging remarks. There is an entire division of government called the Thought Police whose sole purpose is to intensely scrutinize the population, weeding out anyone with a penchant for independent thought. In this society people work constantly to provide an emotionless expression, as even questionable glances can result in non-existence, for the government not only exercises full control over its subjects, but also over history.  Massive effort goes into editing the past to make sure it's in line with the ruling party's position as it is today.  If they decide you're gone, there is no historical trace left to ever prove you existed. War is a constant state of existence. If the "enemy" changes, history is rewritten to show that they've ALWAYS been at war with that enemy (regardless of what you might think you remember).

Winston is employed as one of the people responsible for rewriting history, and he struggles to reconcile what he knew to be the facts yesterday with what he puts in place as the new facts today.  He's heard rumors of "the brotherhood," a secret underground resistance organization intent on toppling the government, but do they actually exist, or are they a tool of the government???  Are they really being periodically bombed by enemies from abroad, or are those bombings government sponsored to keep the citizens alarmed and in line???

The story is very well written and, in many ways, timeless.  It's a warning of where government can go if the citizens aren't vigilant (heavily influenced by Nazi Germany and Communist Russia at the time).  I would highly recommend this one.  It's an intense book!

I'm going to spoil the ending after this point, for those who care about such things.

As mentioned at the beginning, I formed some preconceptions about this story before I ever cracked the book.  As I read along, my hunches were bolstered.  I could see the end coming and was curious how it was all going to happen.  Then, it all went bad, and the ending was most unexpected.

See, I thought this would be a tale of the lowly cog awakening to his destiny and gradually sparking the turning point in the revolution that would bring down the party.  That's totally how the story goes for the longest time.  He meets a woman who shares similar views (and who he falls in love with).  He makes contact with a much higher-up party member who confirms the legend of the brotherhood and offers to hook him up.  Then bang.  He's arrested by the Thought Police, subjected to torture that brings him to the brink of death, and ultimately released (I'll leave it to you to decide if that makes him lucky or not).  The ending thought I took away from this is, after a certain point, there is no overthrowing the system, only the illusion of trying.  The view and reach of Big Brother is such that plotting something as intricate as a revolution is no longer even possible.