I’m going to be trying bloglines, to see if it will help me get more of the material I flag for posting actually posted!
Author: jevlir
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Testing Bloglines
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Comics on your Phone
In an interesting combination of technology and entertainment, comic publishers may soon be delivering their product to cell phones, according to this MSNBC story.
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DVD: The Great Debaters
I finally got around to seeing this movie, having picked it up on Netflix. No, not from Amazon.com, thought that is the link I’m providing above! It was well worth watching.
Denzel Washington is, as always, wonderful, with a good supporting cast. The story flows well and feels authentic.
I note that some viewers have thought it was a bit light on content (see refs in Wikipedia), that the movie didn’t go deep enough. I think it did quite well.
The problem is that so often those who review movies are very serious readers or viewers who know a topic very well and have thought about the major issues. If I review a Bible commentary, for example, I’m likely to be critical of points it fails to cover, even though those were not interests of the audience for which it was intended.
For a nation that is beginning to forget just how recent Jim Crow was in this country, just how recently African Americans were lynched, and just how recently it was that bathrooms were segregated not to mention schools, this movie talks about just the right issues.
There’s a very compelling scene in which Dr. James Farmer, who holds a PhD and speaks seven languages, is ordered around by a couple of white folks who quite possibly can’t read. At least that’s the implication, and I’m sure that was the reality in many cases.
As I watched the movie, I thought of this year’s race for the White House. I said when controversy erupted about Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s preaching that he was a civil rights leader from another time and we needed to understand where he was coming from. Just how angry and resentful might you be, if you had grown up black in the Jim Crow south? I understand in a small way what might make some people very angry.
At the same time it simply increases my respect for Barack Obama, who has turned the corner and is building a future together. But those of us who are white need to refrain from shock and amazement that the generation who had to live through that type of treatment haven’t yet gotten over it. I wonder how long it would take me!
The Wikipedia article also mentions an interesting difference between the historical debate team and the one in the movie. Despite their win over USC, the national champions (they used Harvard in the movie), the Wiley College team did not receive the trophy. They weren’t “in.”
I think the movie tells a great story and serves to remind us of some things that we need very badly to remember. We’d like to think these things happened in another age, but we’re only just over into the next century.
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Book: Hand of Evil
I’m back to J. A. Jance again with this fascinating novel of suspense and mystery. I like Jance’s characters and her ability to keep the suspense going whilst keeping you involved with those characters. The mystery is good, though I guessed most of it a bit too early for my test. I might well credit that to chance, however, because I don’t do that so frequently with her books.
In Hand of Evil, Ali Reynolds finds herself drawn into multiple cases of extreme evil, with one case distracting her from the other. It’s not her intention to get into police business, but she does. Along the way she finds herself falling in love, largely unaware.
This was my first Ali Reynolds book, and I need to go back and read something earlier. I’m also looking forward to the new Joanna Brady mystery, Damage Control, scheduled for August 1, 2008.
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Book: The Third Lynx
I like Timothy Zahn’s writing a great deal, though I prefer the conqueror series to any of his other writing. Nonetheless Blackcollar and Cobra material is really, really good, so the comparison is not that hard.
I found The Third Lynx
and the earlier book in the series Night Train to Rigel
to be substantially lighter than his other material. The universe seemed contrived at first, but then as I read I discovered that it is contrived in many ways, according to the internal logic of the story, so in my view all’s well.
The characters are interesting, the background is intriguing and off the beaten scifi track, and the plot is good for an adventure story. As I said, it isn’t as engaging for me as the Conqueror series was, but that would be hard to accomplish in any case.
My rating for this one is a 4 pushing a 5.
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Book: Patrimony
This is another Pip & Flinx adventure. I have to confess that while I love Alan Dean Foster, who is one of those authors I look for on most trips to the library and every trip to the bookstore, I am getting a little overdosed on these books. The problem is that we have had too many of them in which Flinx searches for his father, tries to learn about his powers, and deals with headaches. They are beginning to seem a bit repetitive. On to the next item I say!
Well, this book did provide some answers, though I’m not going to say anything to give them away. At the same time, it bears a great deal of similarity to previous books. I wasn’t that excited about the plot itself. I do enjoy Foster’s relaxed way of presenting a new culture, and I enjoyed both planet and culture as described in this particular book. That part will keep me coming back to Flinx and to the Humanx Commonwealth in other forms as well.
I rate this a 3 by itself, but would raise that to a 4 because of its relatives.
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Psalm 46 for Lectionary Pentecost +3
Since I blogged about this Psalm before, and rewrote it into an Italian Sonnet (largely for my own edification, though I couldn’t resist sharing), I thought I’d call attention to my previous post now that it’s the lectionary Psalm for this coming Sunday.
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Added to my Blogroll: Beyond Words
From a comment on my Threads blog, I found Beyond Words and after perusing it a bit, I decided to add it to my blogroll here.
I keep intending to add new writing blogs here regularly, but it seems like this blog always gets my attention last, so things get out of date pretty quickly. Kathy has an engaging writing style with some often subtly challenging material. I’d commend this short story titled Heaven, and this post about a retreat as good examples.
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Book: Deluge
This is the third volume of the Twins of Petaybee series.
To let you know how I felt about the book, let me quote what I said about Maelstrom, the second in the series:
It is lighter than the Dragonrider series, and I don’t find the cultural background anywhere near as interesting, but the characters are engaging, and the story is fun. That’s a lot to recommend a book, especially since I look for books to read when my mind wants to rest rather than be challenged. I’m glad there are books that fit the bill.
As I read that now, more than a year after I wrote it, I can only nod my head. That is exactly how I felt reading this volume. It’s why I keep on reading authors like McCaffrey. She can’t always be writing Dragonriders books after all, and once one has done a series like that, everything else is going to look just a bit pale beside it. But this whole series is good fun, even though it’s not all that deep.
I intend to keep reading both authors.
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Die Hard with a Vengeance
I finally managed to watch this movie a few days ago, and found it to be pretty much what I expected. It was a very limited plot designed to connect the various violent scenes and special effects. Fortunately those were good.
It’s nice to get this without paying for it (Netflix), but if you’d like some mindless diversion that’s fun, it’s the movie for you. If you want a story, well, not so much.