Three sentence movie reviews: Salinger

I think when someone spends nine years and interviews over 150 people, they shouldn’t really limit themselves to ONE documentary about their subject.  Every topic the movie introduced brought up many questions that were not answered and that resulted in an incredibly frustrating semi-portrait of the recluse-when-it-was-convenient-author.  Also, having so few pictures of the subject meant that they repeated themselves a lot with images, which was distracting.

Cost: $9.00
Where watched:  Living Room Theater, with Kelly.

Prompt: The smell of green grass.

This spring, I took a writing class offered through Write Around Portland.  It was called “Prompt” because each week we would meet and write for a limited amount of time–usually somewhere between 2-8 minutes–to a number of different prompts.  As the school year grinds to a start and I have less time to write, I will be featuring excerpts from my writing class in lieu of the weekly essay.

We stopped at the tiny neighborhood grocery store on our way there.  It was past dark and the clerk smiled, knowing what we were up to. She had seen it before, kids piling out of cars, swarming the store and happily lining up to hand over their dollar and change.

We piled back in the car and drove up the road a ways, pulling off and parking in the lot of the Mormon church across the street.  Without much commentary, we picked up our towels, grabbed our bags and headed up the hill.  It was a smooth hike, though steep.  The grass had been graded and trimmed and I always wondered if they had to buy special mowers to operate on such a steep slope.

Halfway up we paused, sweating and panting, and stared out at the city while we caught our breath.  There were others around us, but the hill had room enough for us all.

We broke open our bags and our blocks of ice slid onto the grass.  We caught them with our feet, keeping them from rolling down the hill, as we shoved the empty bags into our pockets and folded up our towels into a small square.  Without hesitation, we set our towels on top of the ice and sat down.  Smiling, we leaned back, our abdominal muscles lifting our feet and we were off, sliding down the grassy hill of a potato magnate in the hot night of a desert summer.  If you kept your feet up, you could make it all the way to the bottom, but mostly laughter took over and you tumbled away from your block of ice, scrambling to catch it before it slid away without you.

 At the bottom, we wrapped our blocks in our towels and walked back up the hill, the sound of green grass beneath our feet, the cold ice block melting through the towels, freezing our hands.

Stand-in camera not making the grade.

I broke my camera.  I dropped it, while putting away tools after working on this project.  It cracked and it was the crazy time of the year and I haven’t had time to take it in to see if it can be repaired.  Matt has lent me his camera and I’m thankful I have something, because having a camera at hand has become something that completes me.  But sometimes the shortcomings of the stand-in camera are maddening.

Oh, if you could only see the detail of this outfit.  His shoes were black leather, with grey spikes.  Not spikes exactly, more like studs.  But pointy, in triangles.  Then, the red pants and the grey sweater to tone it down, but combined with the gray bag and the hat to keep the interest going.  It was a picture of man-in-his-40s dressing perfection.  And all I got was this blurry picture.
 

And this one.
 

Books read in September 2013

Shoot. Here it is the end of October and I haven’t yet written book reviews for September.  Except Bluebird, which was so hideous I immediately wrote the review before time could smooth out the edges and I didn’t think it was so bad.  So these will be short reviews, which is too bad, because there were some good books this month.

Far, Far Away
Tom McNeal
Read for Librarian Book Group
A fairy tale set in Nebraska narrated by the ghost of Jacob Grimm.  Incredibly awesome.  A five-star book.  Until, unfortunately, it morphs into a grim Chelsea Cain-type thriller at the end.  I wasn’t so much a fan of that.  Still, worth the read.

Primates
Ottaviana &  Wicks
Read for Librarian Book Group
Graphic novel featuring three women who work with primates.  Interesting.

The Spectacular Now
Tim Tharp
I read this immediately after I saw the movie so the two melded a bit, for better or for worse.  Great main characters, interesting setting, a look what can happen when alcohol is more than a social lubricant. To me, the book ending was much more satisfying than the movie.

The True Blue Scouts of Sugarman Swamp
Kathi Appelt
Read for Librarian Book Group
“Ugh. Raccoons are characters?”  J-fiction is not my favorite and I never read books with animals as main characters so I wasn’t too thrilled to tackle this.  But guess what?  The book is great. The multiple character viewpoints (animal, human, mythic) are interesting.  The plot is gripping and multifaceted and it would make a great read aloud, especially if you like to do different voices.  Top notch.

One Came Home
Amy Timberlake
Read for Librarian Book Group
Horribly hideous title. Which is too bad, because this is an outstanding book.  It’s got a spunky main character, an interesting historical setting, good information about the passenger pigeon.  Plus it’s an adventure story,  road-book, and a mystery with the tiniest bit of romance sprinkled in.  Very well done.  If only someone had counseled Ms. Timberlake about her damn title.

Etiquette & Espionage
Gale Carriger
Read for Librarian Book Group
Fun Steampunk take on finishing school.  It’s more of a “finishing” school.  As in finishing people off.  The world was not fully developed, but it was entertaining.

Winger
Andrew Smith
Read for Librarian Book Group
Very, very funny.  Best 14-year-old Junior in high school.  It captured well the wanting of adolescence.  My only problem was the cover, which featured a picture of a bloody nose on the front and a comic version of the same bloody nose on the back.  I had to put post-it notes on both sides.  Other than that, I was a fan.  Many people were not thrilled about the ending, but I was okay with it.

Bluebird

Bob Staake
Read for Librarian Book Group
Nope.  Not a fan.  I was charmed at first, by this picture-only picture book, though I found it a bit tough to follow the narrative on some pages.  But the library has it in the “Parenting” section of children’s books for a reason and that reason has to do with the ending.  Good for helping a child understand death, I guess, as long as your belief about death involves floating up into the clouds.

Really? No Desk? Really?

And the hits just keep on coming.

Thanks, Oregonian, for getting rid of three days of home delivery, the movie critic, the music critic, the theater critic, so many other things I’m too mad about to remember right now.  Thanks also for getting rid of the Desk, the column that watches out for consumers.  What, were you afraid that we might report our formerly quality newspaper to its own consumer complaint column?

This would all go so much better if you would just admit you are giving us a lesser product. 

Three sentence movie reviews: Crazy, Stupid, Love

Having seen this film, I feel as if I must make the following point very clearly: People–I’m quite serious here–feel free to recommend movies to me; especially perfectly done romantic comedies that are actually FUNNY as well as ROMANTIC and take nimble turns of plot I don’t really expect.  This movie has been out for TWO YEARS and someone just mentioned it to me this summer, which is a shame because due to the excellent caliber of motion picture (acting/plot/bevy of talented performers) I feel that my life would have been changed, and for the better.  So don’t hold back; if you see a movie you think I will like, by all means let me know what it is.

Cost:  free from library
Where watched: at home with Matt in the same room, but not really paying attention the first night.  Then sitting next to me on the next night when I convinced him to watch it, instead of just listening.

(I don’t only blame you guys.  I also blame the poster.  It is not at all right for what this movie is. It’s also the reason I didn’t see it in the theaters, because I figured I knew what it was about.  But the poster is not an accurate reflection of the movie.  Trust me here.)