Also, NGIP (nearly gratuitous) -- my beloved Z made me a Watchmen icon! Someday I've just got to give Lex a cat named Bubastis.

I love sports movies, though I can't stand sports, and Poolhall Junkies is basically a sports movie. Though there's no uplifting training montage, which is really the best part of a sports movie.

Anyhow, it was pretty funny in parts, though somewhat incoherent. The pool was often fun to watch; the central character starts off so good that it's hard to understand how he could ever lose, though the movie fixes that in a Hustler-like plot turn.

Christopher Walken IM'd in a performance that was nonetheless eyecatching. He had the best line in the movie: upon being taunted about a one-in-a-million shot that won him a bet, with the taunter saying he couldn't ever make that shot again, he says, "I don't have to make it again. I just made it now!"

Good point.

The movie also confirmed what I'd thought for a while: MR is cute and all, but when he's with hair, he does nothing for me. He's just another frat boy with a charming smile and a glint of contempt in his eye for anyone taken in by it.

Jennifer Government by Max Barry: Go read this book. It's a two-days-from-tomorrow story about a world in which corporations rule -- to the extent that one's last name is taken from one's employer -- and Nike stages gang-like hits on customers to promote its new sneakers. And that's just the beginning. The coincidences pile on pretty high, but the plot moves fast enough that it's forgivable. And I'm just a sucker for tough-guy dialogue in new settings (Anita Blake, anyone?), like "You're pretty confident for a guy whose antivirus software depends on buffer overruns." Well, in context it's a great line, and literature does the tech-suspense better than movies, where staring at a screen and waiting for a printer is hard to dramatize, as in that last Tom Clancy/Harrison Ford movie.

Also, the title character, with a barcode on her cheek and enough baggage to fill a cargo hold, is just plain fun.

Go read this book.

From: [identity profile] meret.livejournal.com


I'll definitely check out the Barry book. Thanks for the rec! :)
silveraspen: silver trees against a blue sky background (Default)

From: [personal profile] silveraspen


As it turns out, I needed to go to the bookstore tonight anyway, and so it's simplicity itself for me to add this to my shopping list. :) Thanks for the title, and previously for the Cerulean Sins preview link!

From: [identity profile] vivwiley.livejournal.com

kickbacks?


So, are you getting commissions from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Borders for all the books you're getting other people to buy. Must now add Jennifer Gov't to my list. Thanks! When my apartment collapses into the apartment below it from the sheer weight of the books, I know which lawyer I'm calling!

From: [identity profile] rivkat.livejournal.com

Re: kickbacks?


I boycott Amazon, though I occasionally browse their recommendations. Bookfinder (http://www.bookfinder.com) is my favorite, because it's a metasearch site that covers B&N, Amazon, Half.com, and a bunch of others, and that way I usually get books that are much cheaper. I suppose I could sign up for one of those affiliate programs, where if you click through my link and buy, I get a cut -- but I don't really care that much, and I think you should buy books at prices you can afford.

Can't help you about the weight thing, though. Our new apartment is nearly full, even with all my law books at work and Z's history books at his office, and even though I made a 30% cut in the fiction when we left DC. So many books, so little shelf space.

From: [identity profile] grifyn.livejournal.com


You simply don't care that I have 10 books loitering here that can't be read because I'm writing, do you? They're begging to be read, and then you rec another one that sounds great when I've still got some money on my Barnes & Noble giftcard. Nefarious!

From: [identity profile] estepheia.livejournal.com

Alan Moore


Are you a Watchmen fan or an Alan Moore fan?
I always preferred V for Vendetta, an awesome story.

I heard they made Watchmen into a motion picture. Supposedly they had or have a really good script. I look forward to seeing that film

From: [identity profile] rivkat.livejournal.com

Re: Alan Moore


V for Vendetta was okay, but didn't do it for me the way Watchmen did. Watchmen had the layered narrative, multiple-source, multiple-valid-interpretations things that I crave. V for Vendetta felt more specifically British, colder, like a rewriting of 1984. I liked the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen well enough. Boy, does that man have a grim worldview.

Rereading the end of Watchmen feels a little different now, post 9/11. I always remember the ending as hopeful, but when I reread it just now, I saw that the hope was at best a possibility.

From: [identity profile] meteordust.livejournal.com


If you liked Max Barry's Jennifer Government, have you checked out his NationStates (http://www.nationstates.net/) site? It's basically a nation simulation game. The site says, "You create your own country, fashioned after your own political ideals, and care for its people. Either that or you deliberately torture them. It's really up to you." It's fun to watch your own private nation evolve, or to check out some of the ideas other people come up with, from Scandinavian liberal paradises to psychotic dictatorships.

From: [identity profile] rivkat.livejournal.com


I'll have to check that out. It sounds sufficiently creepy to amuse me. Thanks for the link.
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