[Poetry] We Must Fight To Run Away by Chester Hopewell

I like this book quite a bit.  I picked it up at the Decatur Book Festival emerging authors tent, and it is basically a chap book of poetry filled with several of the author's photographs.  Both are well done.  I read it twice over three weeks just so that I could feel I could do the poems justice and greatly absorb their meaning.

The primary theme of the poems is about life, love, existential existence and finding a sense of purpose in spite of ourselves.  At least, that's what I got out of it.  There are a great many balloons and other curious pictures that go well thematically with the rest of the chapbook.   I had a positive feeling when I read it the first time, and a feeling of greater introspective focus when I read it the second, and I'm glad I read it the second time, because I got more out of it. 

I would highly recommend this book.  It seems like an excellent thing to leave on a coffee table for your guest to read to entertain themselves while you are otherwise occupied around the house.  They are universal enough in their appeal that I think they could do well with most anyone.

[Movie] John Wick (Spoiler)

This movie was awesome but it is not for people who need the site "Does the Dog Die?" 

On the other hand, this movie is absolutely for people who do love movies about people who beat people who hurt animals to death.  John is a former mafia assassin (freelance) who has left the life behind for five years due to the love of a beautiful woman.
She ends up dying of cancer, which devastates John. But she knows John well enough to know he needs "something to love" or he will revert to his darker ways so she leaves him a puppy, which he embraces as her memory.  Unfortunately,  for many, a group of Russian thugs see his nice car, follow him home and steal the car, but they don't stop there and kill the puppy with a baseball bat, basically because they can.

When the thugs try to fence the car, the fence refuses to take it when he learns who owned it.   But the head of the thugs turns out to be the son of a powerful Russian Mafia figure. This leads to a conflict of two powerful forces, one deadly man with an indomitable will, and the other a vast criminal empire determined to keep the dog killing thug alive.

The moral clarity adds a bloody bright red light to what would otherwise be a nourish world of ten million shades of gray.  It is a fascinating world where a hotel provides neutral ground for professional assassins, with dire consequences for those who violate its sanctity.  It is a good action flick with good acting, a fabulous cast, and great visuals.  It ends well too.  I  highly recommend it.

[Movie] A Most Wanted Man

Short: "This money isn't clean.  I don't want it."

Medium: A special intelligence unit watches a 'wanted' chechnyan declared a terrorist by Russians after torture while fending off Americans and the German police who want to snatch him up instead of playing the longer game.

Verbose: This is an american action flick with a European ending.

(Spoilers)

I would give this movie the rating that it has on Rotten Tomatoes (which is high) but include the ending is depressing and typical of a european film.  The first half of the film follows the perspective of a washed up german intelligence agent leading a tiny intelligence unit that keeps an eye on the local islamic population using extra legal informanents.  He is after a possible financier of terrorism that he can turn into an intelligence asset.

The heir to a russian war criminal comes seeking money left to him by his father in a german shadow bank.  To do so, he enlists the help of an attractive human rights lawyer who wants to help him with his legal status.  The german intelligence unit buys time to set up a sting on the Islamic financier, and succeeds but at the last minute the bloodthirsty americans crash in and steal the financier and the innocent heir to the russian war criminal, likely spiriting them to Guantanamo.

But the intelligence official does nothing.  No appeal.  No going to the media, etc.  Nevertheless, the acting on this film is absolutely superb for almost every single performance.

[Con] Dragon Con 2014 - Sunday

Couldn't go to the con this year, but I had a lot of fun.

Pros: As far as the con itself was concerned, little changes they have made to the building arrangements has made traffic flow much more smoothly.  Lines were well maintained.  Technical problems were minimal.  Most of the tracks in the program seemed relevant (ie a much needed consolidation had occurred).  All of the events I went to had enough space, and even in events where they had to turn the audience away, tiny events were in tiny rooms and well attended events were in larger rooms. 

I went to the puppetry slam for the first time this year and HOLY @##@$@#$.  This has now replaced the masquerade for me as the must see event of the year.  It is FANTASTIC.  The other panels were informative and I enjoyed them quite a bit.

And a shout out to the absolutely amazing Dragon Con volunteers who tirelessly and mostly invisibly make the whole thing work well.

Cons: Only a few.  The Masquerade was in SORE need of troopers to move some morons off the stage.  If I can afford it, next year we're likely just buying the video so we can still see it but just fast forward past the crap.  And the dealers room is AWFUL.  Last year I heard all kinds of complaints about how crowded it was.  I never got that far. The entire entrance to the place is crowded and having to get into a ten minute line to GET INTO THE DEALERS ROOM is insane.  I understand the lack of space downtown.  Here's the thing.  They would literally be better off taking one of the hotel parking lots and having the dealer's room be in THAT instead of the God Awful Americas Mart.

[Movie] Magic in the Moonlight

This movie was directed by Woody Allen.  We had originally gone to see a Most Wanted Man but it was at another theater.  We ended up seeing this  It was delightful.  It was also delightful that Woody Allen wasn't in it.

The basic plot of the movie is that the world's greatest magician who dresses in chinese yellow face, is also the world's greatest debunker of the supernatural. His college, who is only moderately successful invites him to check out a 'real' psychic he thinks is fake but needs help proving it.  This is, at heart a love story, but I want to avoid spoilers.  Just because I saw what was happening fairly early on, doesn't mean everyone will.  That's the delightful thing about this movie, it is a surprise and yet familiar enough to make the plot comprehensible.

The setting in a castle/manor is set in the south of France and is utterly gorgeous.  The costumes for the period, set at the turn of the century, are also fantastic.  The acting is excellent but the cinematography is one of the best parts of the movie.

I highly recommend it.

[Book] Silkworm by JK Rowling

This is the second in the Coromander Strike series.  It is a very good book.  Normally, I don't have much use for stories about writers since it seems like so much literary masturbation to me, but in this case it works.  The mystery is about a writer who has written an autobiographical smear of literary pretentiousness that slams everyone around him.  At first, Strike is just to find him but when he finds his target dead, it becomes a murder mystery.

The characters are interesting in this, particularly the highly complex relationship between Strike and his assistant.  Strike is not the normal lantern jawed handsome white guy who solves mysteries, he's a flawed person but a real person with contacts and contracts and obligation.  Rowling does an excellent job at hinting at the rich and complex backstory that Strike has, without wallowing in it.  90% of the prose in the book is about the mystery, and more importantly, it is highly believable how he solves it.

I highly recommend this book to both mystery fans and those who like Rowling.

[Tech] The Panasonic DMP BD91P-K

This is a piece of crap.  So apparently, regular Blu-Ray players do not require an internet connection BUT they all require firmware updates but its up to the manufacturer when it takes place.  Panasonic has a wifi receiver in the device that can receive a signal indicating it needs up upgrade.  BUT with this model you cannot update the device using wifi.  We bought it six weeks ago and today Panasonic sent out a signal indicating that it needed a firm ware upgrade. 

I called the Panasonic guy and he offered to SELL ME AN EXTRA PART to make it work.  "Nice DVD player you have there.  Wanna buy this wifi connection device? Oh? Well then you'd better hook up with our good buddies, the cable companies."

Note, as a Blu Ray player, it seemed to work fine.  But they reserve the right to brick it any time they want. We did have fair warning, after all, as the Panasonic customer service rep mentioned on the phone, it said clearly in the manual firmware updates were required.  That's right, the manual in the box we purchased.  So right when I'm going to call the DA and ask to prosecute for fraud, I notice on the back of the box in tiny tiny tiny letters it says, "Requires Broadband Connection."

The next time someone tells you labeling requirements from the government are ridiculous? Send them to this statement.