Movie Review: Iron Man 2

Iron Man 2 starring Robert Downey, Jr.

Iron Man 2 is a sequel that works. Robert Downey returns as Tony Stark, now publicly know as Iron Man. The first film had Tony inventing Iron Man to save his life and allow his escape from terrorists who wanted to use his genius for evil, and made Tony realize that he himself had been using his genius for evil. In this film, Tony has redeemed himself by bringing peace to the world through his Iron Man persona. But there has been a cost. The same technology  that saved his life in the first film is now killing him by poisoning his body. Without a substitute, Tony will die. In the meantime, the Military Industrial Complex, personified by Sam Rockwell's character, is none too happy with what peace is doing to their business, and some elements of the government are uncomfortable not being in control of the peace keeping force. Add in Mickey Roarke as a brilliant but jealous and vengeance seeking bad guy, and the stage is set for lots of special effects laden battle scenes that look great and successfully wow the audience.

Robert Downey, Jr is great as Stark. He plays smart well, and snarky even better. Mickey Roarke looks better than he did in The Wrestler (I thought he looked like he'd had major plastic surgery in that one; now he looks much more natural) and even though here he is laden with a thick sometimes incomprehensible accent, he does most of his great acting with his expressive face and body. Gweneth Paltrow is strong enough as Pepper Potts playing a foil straight man character to Downey. Scarlett Johannson looks great but doesn't get much to do until some late martial arts scenes that look fabulous as comic book battles.

Book Review: The Killing Floor

The Killing Floor, by Lee Child.

The Killing Floor is the first book in the Jack Reacher series. Reacher is a former military policeman who now chooses the life of a hobo, randomly roaming the country in search of interesting things. He carries almost nothing with him, buys new clothes occasionally instead of washing (he disposes of the old clothes), and never plans to settle down. What he finds mostly in his search are troubles. In The Killing Floor, he is arrested in a small town in Georgia for murder. Because he has a strong alibi, he is soon helping the police to solve the murder, which in a coincidence only acceptable in popular entertainment turns out to be of his brother.

Killing Floor is a fast paced, sometimes gruesomely bloody action tale. Sometimes the details stretch the bounds of the possible, and I don't for a second believe that the bad guy's scheme would have worked in real life, but the character of Reacher is unique and interesting, and I will continue to read other books in the series.

The Jack Reacher Series:

1. Killing Floor
2. Die Trying
3. Tripwire
4. Running Blind
5. Echo Burning
6. Without Fail
7. Persuader
8. The Enemy
9. One Shot
10. The Hard Way
11. Bad Luck and Trouble
12. Nothing to Lose
13. Gone Tomorrow
14. 61 Hours

Book Review: Simple Genius

Simple Genius, by David Baldacci

Simple Genius is the third Baldacci book featuring the characters of Sean King and Michelle Maxwell.  In this one, Sean and Michelle investigate a death at a research facility located near a highly secure CIA location in Virginia.

The book begins with Michelle instigating a bar fight and getting tossed into a mental institution as a result. Michelle has some serious mental issues that are discussed at length, but unfortunately don't seem very relevant to the main plot. Much of the early part of the novel dealing with Michelle's stay in the mental facility play like a different story altogether, and could easily have been removed without much impact to the main story.

That main story begins with Sean taking a job in order to get money to pay for Michelle's hospital stay.  Sean is asked to determine if the death at the research facility is a murder or a suicide. This leads to more murders, attempted murders, kidnapping, and gunfights galore.

Michele's stay in the mental hospital not withstanding, the characters, plot and action are all interesting and absorbing until the end. In the end, though, Baldacci has one character behaving completely unbelievably and another character explain everything that was really going on. I found this very much a let down, and wish Baldacci could have shown more, and told less.

The books in the Sean King/Michelle Maxwell series are:

1. Split Second
2. Hour Game
3. Simple Genious
4. First Family

Movie Review: The Princess and the Frog

The Princess and the Frog

The Princess and the Frog is a Disney's latest animation feature, and marks a return to classic hand drawn animation that Disney had supposedly forsworn in favor of 3D computer animation. The story is a more modern variation of the Prince and the Frog fairy tale, and references the classic tale directly as the character's read it early on. The time setting is not clearly stated, but appears to be New Orleans in the 1950's. The heroine, Tiana, is a waitress but wants to start a restaurant. The hero, Prince Naveen, is a wastrel who wants to party. Naveen is turned into a frog by a Dark Voodoo master in a scheme to get money by replacing him with an impostor and having the impostor marry the richest girl in town, who also happens to be Tiana's best friend. You would think  a magician who could accomplish this could find safer ways to make money. Tiana is turned into a frog because she tries to reverse the magic by kissing the frog prince. The logic in this is never explained. It is of course necessary or there would be no movie.

From the point that the frog prince arrives on the scene, The Princess and the Frog is as good as just about any Disney animation. The story from that point is lively and humorous. The main characters are far more entertaining as frogs than they were as humans. The supporting animal characters, Louis the horn playing alligator and Ray the love-sick lightning bug, are humorously written and entertainingly voiced. There are some genuinely creepy voodoo shadow monsters. There was a happy ending for nearly everyone. One character dies, which surprised me and I thought was well handled.

Unfortunately, the beginning section and to a lesser extent the ending drag the whole movie down from classic status. The animation in the beginning made me think Disney would regret reviving hand-drawn. The characters especially looked no better than the flat, rushed looking things you see on Saturday morning cartoons. There is one segment that is animated to look like Tiana's dream drawing of her ideal restaurant. It's a great idea, but unfortunately the execution just emphasized the whole flat look of the overall animation. The characters were depressing and/or annoying. The best friend character was especially annoying, and seemed more like Cinderella's step-sisters than someone you might care about. The music  in this section is particularly dull and unmemorable. The music overall in no way compares to the great Disney musical scores of the past. This is likely due not to a lack of talent in Randy Newman, who I like, but to using strongly jazz-inflected tunes throughout (appropriate to the New Orleans setting) rather than the more typical Broadway show-tune style.

Book Review: Fade Away

Fade Away, by Harlan Coben

Fade Away is about a missing pro basketball star. Myron Bolitar, a former college basketball superstar waylaid by injury and now a sports agent, is asked to look for him. You wouldn't think you could easily build a mystery series around a sports agent, but Harlan Coben finds a way.

I'm reading Harlan Coben's Myron Bolitar books in order. Fade Away is the third. This is the most personal of the Bolitar books so far, from Myron's perspective. We spend a lot of time learning about Myron's history as a basketball star. His history is vitally important to the story, both in understanding the events and in understanding the character of Myron Bolitar. Maybe because of this, it is told in third person instead of first person. Still, we mostly follow along with Myron, to the extent that when the narrative viewpoint switches to Esperanza or Win it is quite jarring.

I liked Fade Away. The story is interesting. The reader is given a lot of clues to process. The suspects and hangers-on are interesting. The back story and development of Myron makes one glad this is an ongoing series. This is good, because Myron is the only character really developed in any depth. The supporting cast (Win, Esperanza, Jessica) are superficially portrayed, but provide good moments of comic relief, including a new character of Big Cindy who creates quite the vivid impression.

The books in the Bolitar series are:

1. Deal Breaker
2. Drop Shot (Myron Bolitar) 
3. Fade Away
4. Back Spin: A Myron Bolitar Novel (Myron Bolitar Mysteries)
5. One False Move: A Myron Bolitar Novel (Myron Bolitar Mysteries)
6. The Final Detail: A Myron Bolitar Novel (Myron Bolitar Mysteries)
7. Darkest Fear (Myron Bolitar)
8. Promise Me (Myron Bolitar, No. 8)
9. Long Lost

Book Review: The Killer Inside Me

The Killer Inside Me - by Jim Thompson

Lou Ford is a bad man. He doesn't care for anyone, even those he says he likes. He is a complete phony. Everything he says and does is purely for effect, solely to convince people that he is a normal, boring, not very funny fellow. Because he is really a brutal killer. He also happens to be the narrator of the story.

The Killer Inside Me is about Lou Ford when he loses control, kills, and then has to try and cover the killing up. He does this by lying, which he has done all of his life, pretty much every minute of the day, and killing more, which he has wanted to do all of his life and which he does with no second thoughts.

Lou is not reliable narrator, though. The story is sometimes hard to follow because what we are being told doesn't seem to match what people are doing or saying. The main character is evidently not telling us everything, because others suspect him for reasons that seem minor. It seems hard to justify the gusto with which they react, the suspicions they clearly have of Lou, who by his own account is well liked and seems normal to everybody else. The ending begs the question: how does Lou manage to write/narrate his story anyway?

The dialog seems awkward, This may be because of the time frame (the 1950's), the setting (West Texas), or the narrative perspective.

Overall, this was an interesting novel. It is also short, so even with its flaws, it makes for a brief, thought provoking diversion.

Book Review: The Lost Symbol

The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown

You can tell this is a fantasy, because the Redskins are in the playoffs.

I've read all of Dan Brown's books so far, and if you liked his others, you will probably like The Lost Symbol. I don't think it is as good as the earlier books, for several reasons, but it still is entertaining and pulls the reader along on its rapid roller coaster of action and puzzle solving.

The Lost Symbol takes place over only eight hours or so, though there are numerous flashbacks giving some of the characters' background to set the story. All of Brown's books take place over a short time, with the main characters rushing from one crisis to another, usually with something important on the line should they fail to solve the current puzzle presented by Brown's antagonist. I think the Lost Symbol takes place over the shortest time yet. The puzzles are interesting enough, and are presented along with an interesting take on the history and relationship of Washington, DC and the Freemasons.

Brown claims that everything he presents here, historically and scientifically, is true. I think he classifies something as true if he can find any reference on the internet to someone who once claimed it as true. There is a touch of hyperbole. I know computer stuff pretty well (it's my day job) and Brown is laughably ignorant on most computer issues. This is hardly a fault restricted to Dan Brown, as most books and especially movies get computer stuff wrong. Actually, I understand why. Real life computer are boring! And there doesn't seem to be any Lost Symbol.

The biggest problem with this book, though, is that it fails to convince us that the crisis his characters are involved in is in fact a crisis. We are repeatedly told that some information, hidden from the reader, is a matter of national security. One character, shown a screen image of this information, immediately changes his entire motivation. Yet when we are shown the basis for the national security crisis, it seems boring and mundane. The villain has a secret video of prominent politicians and celebrities participating in secret mason rituals! Oooh! That is to say, so what! Politicians and celebrities are seemingly daily shown to be doing much worse.

Interestingly, my audiobook version had an added feature: a sneak preview of Dan Brown's next blockbuster, The Mother of God! Here is what I can remember.


The Mother of God, by Dan Brown.

"Listen!" said the eerily close, disembodied voice. Robert Langdon recognized the voice as that of the tall, tattooed, muscular, hairless albino who had earlier chased him through the tunnels beneath old New York.

"Like a Virgin. Touched for the very first time!" played from some unfathomable source.

"I don't understand! It's a Madonna song," cried Langdon.

"Exactly," whispered the whispery voice. "Pay closer attention, Mr. Langdon."

"Robert, I know you can figure this out!" Margarita Villaneuva said to Langdon with fatigued lovingness. "You are the most brilliant symbologist I have ever met!" Margarita admired Langdon's muscular swimmers body, smelled his seldom washed tweed jacket. In all of her twenty four years, she had never met a man like Robert Langdon, not even while getting her doctorate in mystical string theory from MIT.

Langdon tried to focus. He had hurt his shoulder hanging from the Empire State Building, and twisted his ankle when the hang glider landed from the Statue of Liberty. The last thirty seven minutes had been pure hell! Still, he knew the answer was just beyond his grasp.

"Madonna," Langdon thought aloud. "Most people associate the word Madonna with the Virgin Mary, but it literally means 'My lady.' But there is another, older meaning. Mad Onna means Mad Japanese woman."

"Robert, maybe he's not referring to the singer! Maybe he wants us to examine the lyrics!"

"Margarita, you're even more brilliant than you are beautiful! 'Like a virgin' must be referring to extra virgin olive oil! And it's not 'touched', it's touche-d, from the old French word tuchier. And the root of tuchier is..."

"Tuch!. Robert, do you mean..."

"Yes, it's so obvious now!"