June random reviews

DVDs:

• Diary of a Mad Black Woman - hated it. With a passion. Read the review here.
• Ellen: The Complete Season 2 - a pedestrian sitcom. Ellen DeGeneres deserves - and got - better. Read the review here.
  
• The Flower of My Secret - not the best effort from Pedro Almodovar, but at least he's always interesting. Read the review here.
• A Place Called Chiapas - a good introduction to "the world's first postmodern revolution." Read the review here.
• Seventh Heaven: The Complete Second Season - I don't represent the target audience for this show. I represent the target audience of people most likely to hate this show. And yet, it's pretty much unhateable. Read the review here.
• The West Wing: The Complete Fourth Season - the last season I can wax poetic about this once-great show. Read the review here. (And the even waxier third season review here.)
  

Books in brief:

• The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. I reluctantly purchased the hardcover partly because I was the last person on the planet left who hadn't read it, but mostly because my book club chose it as our selection this month. My uncle had loaned me the first Robert Langdon book, Angels & Demons, months ago, and Da Vinci was a rehashing of that formula. Entertaining and interesting despite awkward writing, but difficult to take seriously and instantly forgettable.
• Pack up the Moon by Richard Teleky. A beautifully written, thoughtful reflection on loss and friendship, with a mystery at the heart of it that isn't the point. Teleky thanks Sarah McLachlan in his preface, which made me predisposed to like the book but really has nothing to do with anything. But I prefer the heartbreaking W.H. Auden poem it gets its title from, memorably recited in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Not during one of the weddings.
  

"The opinions of most people are like the playthings of infants."
- Heraclitus

Random reviews roundup

Links to my random reviews:

October 2005 includes:
DVDs: Shall We Dance; The Moon and Sixpence
Books: Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie

September 2005 includes:
DVDs: Swimming Upstream; I Am The Cheese; And Then There Was One
Books: A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews; Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman; Eight Minutes Idle by Matt Thorne

August 2005 includes:
DVDs: House M.D., Season One; Because of Winn-Dixie; The Thorn Birds: The Missing Years; Rory O'Shea Was Here; Undeclared - The Complete Series
Books: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger; Misadventures by Sylvia Smith

July 2005 includes:
DVDs: ER: The Complete Third Season; Sledge Hammer! Season Two; Trading Spaces: Great Kitchen Designs and More
Books: Naked Brunch by Sparkle Hayter

June 2005 includes:
DVDs: Diary of a Mad Black Woman; Ellen: The Complete Season 2; The Flower of My Secret; A Place Called Chiapas; Seventh Heaven: The Complete Second Season; The West Wing: The Complete Fourth Season
Books: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown; Pack up the Moon by Richard Teleky

May 2005 includes:
DVDs: Birth
Books: Losing Gemma by Katy Gardner; The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty

April 2005 includes:
DVDs: Chain of Fools; Hotel Rwanda; Mile Zero; Secrets & Lies; Word Wars
Books: The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville; The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald

March 2005 includes:
DVDs: Motorcycle Diaries; Seducing Dr. Lewis
Books: Any Human Heart by William Boyd; Practical Demonkeeping by Christopher Moore

"In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane."
- Oscar Wilde