Captain America: Civil War (2016)
Apr30

Captain America: Civil War (2016)

Captain America: Civil War (2016)   A couple of years back, I went into raptures over what was for me one of that year’s most unexpected movie pleasures: “There won’t be any spoilers in this review because I want you to go to the cinema and love this movie as much as I do.  I will, however, give you one warning:  I may just make a complete asshole of myself.  I may just go totally over the top about how great Captain America: The...

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Dan Simmons – The Terror
Apr28

Dan Simmons – The Terror

  ‘The Mathematics of this Purgatory’: The Terror   It is a fictionalized attempt to answer the true-life mystery of what became of the men who sailed with Captain John Franklin aboard two ships— ‘Erebus;’ and ‘Terror’ – which set out in 1845 to find the opening of the then-fabled Northwest Passage; and which ended in failure sometime in 1848. It is a tale of high adventure among men who were almost made of iron, enduring conditions...

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The Psychopath Test – A Journey through the Madness Industry
Apr13

The Psychopath Test – A Journey through the Madness Industry

The Psychopath Test A Journey through the Madness Industry   (Just for a change, I think that this piece belongs on both blogs…)   ‘But surely stock-market psychopaths can’t be as bad as serial-killer psychopaths,’ I said. ‘Serial-killers ruin families‘ shrugged Bob.  ‘Corporate and political and religious psychopaths ruin economies.  They ruin societies.’ — Jon Ronson   I wrote an article a while back where I mentioned my...

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Gardens of Fear The Weird Works of Robert E.  Howard Vol 6
Apr09

Gardens of Fear The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard Vol 6

Gardens of Fear The Weird Works of Robert E.  Howard, Volume 6 Edited by Paul Herman Part One   These ongoing pieces are overviews rather than reviews and therefore contain spoilers galore   By May of 1934 and having already published eight tales of Conan the Cimmerian to considerable reader approval, it was obvious to Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright that with Robert E.  Howard’s barbarian he had something of a tiger by the tale,...

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Stephen King’s The Bazaar of Bad Dreams
Apr09

Stephen King’s The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

    Yes, I would probably get drummed out of Basic English by starting out with using a cliché like ‘a mixed bag’; but if it’s accurate, well… And that’s what this collection of short stories is.  I’m always going to drop in to see what Uncle Steve has to say and sometimes I’m disappointed; but let’s be honest, for a guy who turns out the sheer volume of words and stories that King does, that is barely one time out of ten. ...

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