Veronica Mars Season 4 Cannot Be Accused of Fan Service

The Review:

For reasons I won’t go into, Rob Thomas cannot be accused of fan service in Veronica Mars Season Four. The eight-episode season is chock full of what made the series so beloved* while ably transporting the formerly-teen characters into full-on adults with complicated lives.** Patton Oswalt and J.K. Simmons (as a pizza delivery man, and ex-con toady to Big Dick Casablancas, respectively) are excellent additions.***

The verdict: Recommended

Cost: $11.99/month via Hulu
Where watched: at home with Matt

Consider also watching:

Further sentences:

*Wise-cracking, dark humor, solid dad/daughter relationship, a romance that is complicated, mysteries to solve, bad choices to make, good choices to make, and the wealthy/shady beachfront town of Neptune, California.
**The multitudes of trauma the characters have experienced is being dealt with in ways both healthy and unhealthy. It’s also gently lampooned in two amusing scenes: one with a bunch of true-crime enthusiasts, another with a high school student recapping previous seasons’ plot lines by asking Veronica, “did you know that…?”
***Two questions annoyed me from the first episode. 1) Why does Neptune have a police department when that was an entire subplot of season two? 2)What in the name of all that is holy has become of Logan’s vast fortune? Both of these questions could have been answered with single sentence asides (Ever since incorporation passed in 2015 the police department has taken over in the incompetent realm. And. After the lawsuit with Trina, there wasn’t much left.) Shoddy story crafting there.

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

In Season 4, the professional NBA player, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, is a writer (S4, E6). He’s also the highest-scoring NBA player by total career regular season points scored (38,387).
(Stay focused on the show, IMDB trivia writer. He’s also a producer.)

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw is a Punctuated Film Title

The review:

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw* is ably directed by David Leitch and a worthy addition into the Fast & Furious enterprise.** Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham are a great anti-buddy pair while Idris Elba makes a scene chomping (in a good way) villain. The movie does thing thing where the characters travel all over the globe*** in order to boost its international box office draw, and they end up in “Samoa”**** where a bunch of Samoan men somewhat alleviate the lack of Vin Diesel.*****

The verdict: Good

Cost: $8.35
Where watched: Regal City Center Stadium 12, when I should have been doing other things

Consider also watching:

Further sentences:

*The double ampersand in the title might be some sort of shark jumping indication for this franchise
**Good lord, is there anything in this world so ridiculously entertaining as a Fast & Furious movie (that is not 2 Fast 2 Furious or The Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift)?
***They seem to appear in these new locations as if by magic or Star Trek transponder; even air travel is too slow for the Fast & Furious bunch.
****Hawaii gets the role of Samoa in this film.
*****Though I like many things about this installment of the franchise, Mr. Diesel is, and has always been, my reason for watching.

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

Helen Mirren reprises her role from The Fate of the Furious (2017) as Shaw’s mother. She originally landed the role after she had indicated her desire to be part of the franchise one day, and the producers were happy to accommodate her.

The Farewell is Well Worth Your Time

The review:

Lulu Wang’s The Farewell is a quiet bit of funny and sad as we watch Billi (Awkwafina) come to terms with her Chinese grandmother’s terminal cancer diagnosis.* Shuzhen Zhao (Nai Nai—the grandmother) is a delight, full of vim and opinions and ways to get rid of the negative energy. It’s a movie full of moments that weave together into a loving portrait of a family spread far apart by geography but with a very close bond.

The verdict: Recommended

Cost: $6.00
Where watched: The Hollywood Theatre, with S. North (who paid, because I forgot my wallet)

Consider also watching:

Further sentences:

*Complicating the diagnosis: in China it’s common to withhold the diagnosis from the patient so everyone must act as if the family is only gathering for a family wedding.

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

In addition to writing and directing, Lulu Wang also plays piano on the film’s soundtrack.

A walk in Kenton, Arbor Lodge and Overlook

This unit of the apartment complex down the street from me always has such nice flowers.

I love that you can see the bones of a standard tiny bungalow hiding behind what I would guess was a renovation to give the house a Spanish-style facade.

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Take note!

The Overlook neighborhood doesn’t love that Adidas North American Headquarters shares the neighborhood. But I also bet they didn’t love it when that building was a hospital.

Also, I would recast that sign to read: This is not an adidas approved Lyft or Uber transfer point.

  • I left the “a” in Adidas as a lower case “a” because of branding. However I used uppercase in my writing because that’s what is standard practice in reporting.
  • “Nor” goes better with “neither” which doesn’t work in this sentence.
  • “Pickup” as both a noun and an adjective is one word. It’s two words as a verb.
  • “Drop-off” does use a hyphen
  • However, the use of a compound word and a hyphened word when they have a similar structure is confusing, so I changed “pickup or drop-off area” to the brief phrase “transfer point”
  • I would also consider replacing “Lyft or Uber” with the word “ridesharing” to use a more generic term.
  • I chose “ridesharing” over “ride sharing” because Google’s Ngram Viewer indicates that the compound word is used more often.

A Serious Man is Full of Serious Expressions

The review:

Ethan and Joel Coen are not in any hurry to tell Larry Gopnik’s story in A Serious Man which makes for a meditative viewing experience. The gradual decay Mr. Gopnik’s life is expertly captured by Michael Stuhlbarg* and his misfortune lays the foundation for our entertainment. It’s a slow-moving movie in nearly every way, but constantly amusing and the period details are great.**

The verdict: Good

Cost: Netflix monthly fee ($8.99)
Where watched: at home

Consider also watching these Coen favorites:

Further sentences:

*He has such good facial expressions!
**Also well captured: the amount of profanity spoken in early adolescence. I suspect the ages of 12—15 are peak profanity for most youth.

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

The Coen Brothers stated that the opening scene was nothing more than a little short that they made up to get the audience in the proper mood, and that there is no meaning behind it.

Books read in July 2019

July was a month of YA reading, and came with some excellent book-reading experiences. All hail summer reading!

Recommended

Young Adult: Internment, With the Fire on High, Birthday, We are the Perfect Girl, Like a Love Story

Young Adult

Internment
Samira Ahmed
Read for Librarian Book Group

An alternate-present distopia where all the Muslims in the US are moved to concentration camps just like the Japanese were during WWII. I found this to be a highly discusssable book, with high stakes that I gobbled up.

I correctly predicted the fate of one of the characters very early on, and I would have liked more of a wrap up, but overall, it was a great read.

Within These Lines
Stephanie Morrill

Hot on the heels of Internment, I read this book about a young couple separated by the forced relocation of people of Japanese descent during World War II. The book excelled in depicting the conditions in the internment camp.

It was also one of those historical fiction books where the characters seem to have been transported from 2019 to the early 1940’s. And there weren’t nearly enough siblings. Both the main characters were only children, somewhat of an anomaly during that time.

With the Fire on High
Elizabeth Acevdo
Read for Librarian Book Group

Man, oh man, do I love this book. I can’t recall the last YA novel I read where the main character is also a mom. And what a good mom she was!

Emoni is also a talented cook and the descriptions of her meal preparation felt like descriptions of how art is made. Ultimately, I think she was a little too perfect, but Acevdo’s writing was so good that I didn’t mind.

Voices: The Final Hours of Joan of Arc
David Elliott
Read for Librarian Book Group

The story of Joan of Arc told in different forms of verse.

I loathed all of the verse. I didn’t like how it was written, I despised the poems arranged in shapes, and I thought the guide that explained the different types of poetry within the book should have been at the beginning, not the end.

That said, it’s a short book, so the torture didn’t go on for an overly long period of time.

Birthday
Meredith Russo

It took me a bit to realize this was the same sort of set up as David Nicholl’s One Day. (Which is, of course, the same set up as Same Time Next Year, which probably has the same set up as something in Ovid I don’t know about.)

Anyway! In this case we have two best friends who share a birthday and we meet them on their 13th birthday. Morgan wants to tell his best friend Eric a secret, because if he can tell Eric, then he can tell his father, and after that maybe he can start telling the world.

The stakes are high in this novel. There is no inclusive culture in the small town where the boys live. Life is hard, and both of them are dealing with challenges–poverty, loss of parents, authoritarian parents.

Meredith Russo writes the brutal reality of kids without a support network. This is a hard book, but a good one.

We are the Perfect Girl
Ariel Kaplan

It’s been quite some time since I read such a funny book. Just like in the movies, comedy doesn’t get the same respect as tragedy. It also had very gentle stakes, (no one was going to die, or be killed!) but still packed a punch.

There’s great body image stuff that will probably feel universal for most girls and women, and Kaplan expertly captures pining for a certain someone to love you, while also being convinced they never will love you.

Like a Love Story
Abdi Nazemian

AIDS. It was killing a lot of people during my formative years. And I feel like we’re in a phase of not talking about it.

Enter this book, the story of three kids in New York City. Art is out, Judy is is best friend, and Reza is the new guy at school, lately from Toronto, originally from Iran.

Through their stories, we get the horror and magic that was 1989, the danger of coming out, and the worry and hope of falling in love.

Interspersed with their stories are Art’s note cards written by Judy’s Uncle Stephen as a primer to gay life. I would have liked more of these note cards, but it was a pretty long book, already.

Young Nonfiction

Planting Stories
Anika Aldamuy Denise and Paola Escobar
Read for Librarian Book Group

A beautifully illustrated story of the life of Pura Belpre, librarian, storyteller, puppeteer, and namesake of the award for outstanding works of literature by Lantinx authors and illustrators.

The illustrations are gorgeous. The text had some gaps. For instance: How long did she give up her storytelling to follow her husband around the world?