DVDs:
- Chain of Fools - a very bad movie that I enjoyed very much. Read the review here.
- Hotel Rwanda - a powerful movie, whose weaknesses pale against its subject matter. Read the review here.
- Mile Zero - a disturbing but ultimately uneventful psychological drama. Read the review here.
- Secrets & Lies - director Mike Leigh brings us into his well-drawn world. Read the review here.
- Word Wars - a fun look at the competitive Scrabble circuit. You heard me. Read the review here.
- The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville. I bought this - again - after failing to realize I'd read it before. Which isn't to say it's not a fine novel, with quirky characters in small-town Australia that I enjoyed spending time with, but it was forgettable enough that the descriptive prose and quiet character studies didn't stick with me for long.
- The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald. She could probably write about paint drying and I would find her fluid prose fascinating. Fortunately, she also chooses involving stories with a central mystery about the protagonist, and her characters are wonderfully flawed and complex. With this and her first novel, Fall on Your Knees, she demonstrates a darkness that could be overwhelming, except that it's tempered with humour and fine storytelling. The story loses its punch when we follow the main character to adulthood, but what comes before is gripping.
"We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
