Book Review: Amor Towles Sets the Table

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Table for Two: Fictions showcases the writing talents of Amor Towles in a collection of short stories. There are six short stories that are centered around New York City and a novella that takes place in 1930’s Los Angeles that is a sequel to a previous work entitled Rules of Civility..

Although Towles does limit the setting a bit to mostly New York toward the beginning of the current century.

I find the best stories are The Ballad of Timothy Tochett, The Bootlegger, and The DiDomenico Fragment. The other three stories The Line, Hasta Luego, and I will Survive are pretty good as well. Each story is pretty engaging in its own way. I would have preferred a little more variety in the settings, but Towles does kind show enough variety in his stories and characters to keep me engaged.’

The novella, Eve in Hollywood, has an interesting time and place since it is at the perfect Evelyn Ross has arrived in California and come across an interesting array of people, including a famous Hollywood actress who has become the target of an insidious blackmail scheme. This one does seem a little long to be considered a novella. Also, it’s one of those tales written without quotation marks. Towles seems to take his cue from Cormac McCarthy by using hyphens to signify dialogue. The climax of the story gets pretty good and is reminiscent of the more noirish works of Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett.

Sometimes, a good sampling of shorter works is a nice sidestep on my literary indulgences. Some stories are better than others, but there is nothing in the collection that was too exasperating.

Towles is a solid writer, but he seems to take his time between books. Until the next one comes out, I would encourage any curious readers to have a seat at this particular table and savor some fine literary cuisine.

It’s time to sit in with a most unusual group of sleuths known as the Thursday Murder Club in Richard Osman’s The Bullet That Missed.

Film Review: No Christmas Joy at Barton Academy

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

The Holdovers is a pretty amusing and sometimes moving film about a curmudgeonly teacher tasked with supervising a group of students at a prep school who are not going to spend Christmas holidays with their families for various reasons. Of course, there is one student in which the teacher reluctantly becomes to form a bond.

Alexander Payne directed this movie which was written by David Hemingson. Paul Giamatti is in the lead role as Paul Hunham. Other cast members include Dominic Sessa, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Carrie Preston, and Brady Hepner.

The film takes place in 1970 at a boarding school in New England where a very strict, yet strangely witty teacher is almost universally despised by both students and faculty. The Christmas holidays come up, and five students are unable to return home, and Mr. Hunham is tasked with supervising them alongside the school head cook, who is grieving the recent loss of a son. When one of the wealthy fathers is able to collect all but one of the boys, Angus Tully is left as the sole student left in Hunham’s care. Hunham and Angus begin a tumultuous journey in which they start to understand each other’s disappointments as their emotional walls begin to crack.

Giamatti puts in a typically engaging performance. I had not really heard of Dominic Sessa before this film, but I have to say that I was pretty impressed with his approach to the role. There is something of an understated realism to his performance as the troubled Angus Tully. Angus’s antics are a strange yet effective blend of something amusing and tragic. A major revelation about his lineage comes out which does succeed in making Tully more sympathetic than expected.

Randolph is also impressive as a kind of moral center for Hunham and is instrumental as a bridge between two stubborn and broken people. She also has a gift of effective delivery of some pretty tight zingers.

The film was quite well cast, and Giamatti knows how to work with good writing. The actors portraying the students were pretty good if somewhat unimaginative. You had the nervous guys and the bullies. Angus was the more interesting one as intended. He even shows moments of compassion in spite of his hostility.

The film does feel a little long at times, but the characters were more complicated and layered than many in this genre. There isn’t much that is new in the basic plot, but the familiar elements are put to good use, and it seems the right people were cast. The film even managed to throw out a few surprising twists, and that seems to be an ever-decreasing feat that Hollywood is able to accomplish.

Doctor Who Audio Review: The Beginning of the War

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Rutans vs. Sontarans: Betrayal at the House of Sontar kicks off a new range of audio dramas from Big Finish Productions and stars Jo Martin as the most dubious ideas of an incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who history. The Fugitive Doctor was introduced in the television series a couple of years ago and is apparently one of the versions of the Time Lord before the First Doctor all of the fans recognize.

John Dorney is the writer while Ken Bentley sat in the director’s seat for this one. The episode reveals the secret beginning of the unending war between the Sontarans and Rutans.

The guest cast is comprised of Abi Harris, Nigel Fairs, Jonathon Carley, and Anthony Howell.

The Doctor finds the Sontarans in their early days before they encounter the Rutans. The Doctor is apparently offering up the secrets of the Time Lords in exchange for sanctuary from her former employers known as the Division. Of course, something more dangerous is afoot, and the Doctor is at the center of what will become one of the most expansive wars in the universe.

This episode didn’t really convince me to appreciate this additional Doctor any more than I first encountered her on the television series. Martin is fine as a performer, but her version of the Doctor is not that unique or interesting compared to the other incarnations.

Actually, the story may have been more interesting without her.

There are some additional episodes with other more familiar and reliable Doctors so I will continue collecting this range. Dorney remains one of my favorite writers for this series, but Martin is going to have a tougher time earning my appreication.

Doctor Who Audio Review: Genghis Khan, Nazis, and the Doctor

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Doctor Who: A New Occupation is the latest audio collection from Big Finish Productions to star Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor, accompanied by Sadie Miller as Sarah Jane Smith. Miller has taken over the role originally portrayed by her late mother in the television series. Helen Goldwyn is the director of this set and even wrote the title episode.

Daughter of Destruction is written by Katharin Armitage and has the Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith encounter the tyrannical Genghis Khan as he is about to face a rebellion from his own daughter.

The guest cast includes Susan Hingley, Paul Courtney Hyu, and Rebecca Yeo.

The episode is somewhat interesting and manages to not drag on very long. Baker and Miller in the lead roles make this work better than it probably deserves. It’s not a terrible episode, but it seems a little stale. The focus on the story was on this daughter who apparently is seen as getting short shrift in the history books.

The second episode, A New Occupation, is written by Helen Goldwyn and is a little more interesting even though the audience is back in World War II….again! Christopher Naylor joins Baker and Miller as his version of Harry Sullivan, who was initially portrayed by the late Ian Marter. Naylor is not related to Marter, but he does a decent enough job carrying the role forward.

This story’s guest cast includes Paul Herzberg, Sarah Lawrie, Francesca Pim, Wilf Scolding, and Caroline Strong.

A strange time disruption has materialized on the British isle known as Jersey. A portal to the past sends the Doctor and his companions to a time during the Second World War the island was under Nazi occupation. The Doctor has a fight on his hands to keep the Nazis in the past where they belong without creating a bigger problem that could tear reality apart.

There is some family drama peppering the catastrophe, which makes this a little more interesting. It’s hard to muster any real enthusiasm since Big Finish does a lot with the Second World War. I don’t the overlook the importance of this era, but it feels a little overdone this time.

This latest release just didn’t hold my interest as far as the stories go, but it’s still a treat to have Baker and Miller perform together yet again. The characterization of the Doctor and his companions was written quite effectively, which kept me from giving up on it entirely.

Overall, it was a pretty unremarkable addition to the range, but it still wasn’t a terrible listening experience. It could have been remarkably awful. Anyway, not everything Big Finish does can be given a gold star, but I am still a long way from giving up on them.

Book Review: Don’t Play With The Dinosaurs

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Jurassic Park is certainly one of the more famous works of the late Michael Crichton and deserves the accolades. It probably didn’t all of the movie sequels, but this is the book that started it all.

Dinosaur DNA has been used to populate an isolated island with the intention of opening a most unusual amusement park. There have been strange animal attacks, and Alan Grant, a noted paleontologist, is summoned by the founder of the Jurassic Park to give his opinion and endorsement of the endeavor. Of course, the dinosaurs breach their confinements, and the chase is on. Grant finds himself responsible for keeping two children safe from the unleashed creatures from a long-gone era.

This was a fun read. Crichton does like to display the fruits his research for this story. Sometimes the technical exposition can slow the story down but not to any real intolerable degree,.

The founder’s grandchildren are separated from the group and need to be found. Their bickering was a little distracting at times, and their characters could have been fleshed out a little better.

Crichton was undoubtedly a talented and imaginative writer. The dinosaur attacks were vividly and somewhat gruesomely presernted.

The popularity of this novel is quite deserved, and it’s a little irksome that it took me much longer than necessary to finally get to it.

It’s time for a little change of pace in my literary indulgence as I pull up a chair to a Table for Two, an anthology from Amor Towles.

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Doctor Who Audio Review: It Will Always Be A Wild Ride With The Doctor

~ Peter Kanelis ~ 1 Comment

Ride or Die is a somewhat interesting Doctor Who audio play from Big Finish Productions with Jodie Whittaker and Mandip Gill reprising their roles as the Thirteenth Doctor and Yasmin Khan. The script is written by Rochana Patel and directed by Ken Bentley.

The cast includes Lauren O’Leary, Harry Ryan, and Jason Forbes. Giulia Innocenti portrays the mysterious creatures known as the Banshees. Ako Mitchell and Maddison Bulleyment round out the cast.

This is also part of a longer story in which the Doctor is lured to various locales in time and space by someone known only as the Tourist. That particular mystery may be engaging enough to keep me interested in this range.

In this episode, the Doctor and Yaz arrive on a planet where human colonists are being beleaguered by beings known as Banshees. The Doctor soon has reason to suspect that Banshees are not quite the evil invaders that they appear. There may be a chance for peace if the Doctor can get at the heart of the conflict.

It’s not a bad episode. Some of the usual exploration of the relationship between the Doctor is somewhat predictable and not that interesting. The plot was standard for the era without being anything too unique. Whittaker and Gill seem to be having fun, which is nice. The story arc with the Tourist does seem likely to hold my interest well enough.

Big Finish still does a better job writing for this version of the Doctor than the television producers came up with. It does get a little preachy when it comes to steering clear of war. The Doctor is back to thinking there is no good reason to go to war ever. It just gets a little old, and there are indeed good reasons to go to war even if there are few and far between.

Anyway, I found this episode to be pretty average as far as the story goes. It’s not the most original of plots, but the performances and technical work in post-production still provide some satisfaction.

Book Review: Someone Shot The Wrong Lawyer

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Hot Property is the latest novel by Mike Lupica, which continues the Spenser series originally created by the late Robert B. Parker.

Spenser is hunkered down during a Boston snowstorm when he receives news that his friend, Rita Fiore, has been shot. Rita is a relentless flirt and one of Boston’s toughest attorneys. Her wound is not fatal, but Spenser is determined to find the assailant and bring him out of the shadows. Spenser learns of a pretty intense relationship with a politician that was ended abruptly when he inexplicably drowned. Rita believed her beau to be unimpeachable, but Spenser has some reason to be skeptical when a dodgy land deal seems to be at the heart of the matter. Unfortunately, another shooting happens, and this one is fatal. Someone is tying up some loose ends, and Spenser is very aware that Rita is likely still in danger.

It seems like almost everyone in Spenser’s circle has been shot throughout the series, including the private himself. The plot is actually pretty imaginative. Lupica does throw in some surprising twists. Some of the wisecracks seem a little recycled, but I often felt like that when reading Parker’s novels.

Lupica manages to emulate Parker’s style well enough to keep me engaged. It’s a standard caper for this series, but I wonder if Rita will make some changes in her rather reckless lifestyle in subsequent novels.

This is a pretty good contribution to the series, and Parker would likely approve this one. Lupica was a solid choice to continue the series, and I look forward to getting my hands on the next one.

Until then, my own literary indulgence continues with kind of a modern classic. I decided to read the beginning of what would become a major cinematic franchise by a highly regarded writer who is no longer with us. I am going to explore the wonder of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park.

Doctor Who Audio Review: Morbius Steps Into The Arena With The War Doctor

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Morbius the Mighty is a recent Doctor Who audio play and adds to the increasingly compelling series, The War Doctor Rises presented by Big Finish Productions. Jonathon Carley continues his ever-improving impression of the late John Hurt as the War Doctor, that incarnation that was rejected by the other Doctors for his dramatic resolution of the Time War. Tim Foley is the script writer while Bethany Weimers serves as director.

The guest cast is comprised of Samuel West, returning as his version of the tyrannical Time Lord, Morbius, alongside Sheila Ruskin, Gareth Armstrong, Theo Solomon, and Pamela Novete. Nicholas Briggs also returns to the sound booth voicing the Daleks.

The War Doctor has been poisoned with a substance that keeps him from being able to travel in time. He is in seclusion on a rather peaceful planet and is tended to by a nurse named Cora, formerly of the Sisterhood of Karn. The Time War continues to disrupt the cosmos, but the War Doctor has been able to find one of the few sanctuaries that have yet to be affected. In the meantime, an ancient evil has been resurrected, and Morbius has a consuming grudge against the Doctor. The War Doctor is compelled to re-enter the fight, and not even Morbius may be ready for what his old enemy has become in order to battle more effectively.

Foley is becoming a pretty consistently interesting contributor to the series. He does indulge in a rather shameless ripoff of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan that I found a little distracting, but he later owns that in the exclusive interviews, so I wasn’t quite so annoyed.

West has a great interpretation of Morbius. He has played the role before for Big Finish and really brings out this silky, charismatic menace that is quite a treat to listen to. Morbius has a companion of his own in the shape of a Time Lord known as Judd, played by Gareth Armstrong. Armstrong is a great addition to the cast as well.’

The relationship between the War Doctor and Cora is quite interesting as well. There is kind of a prickly affection between the two of them, which is a familiar dynamic in the series, but Foley uses that trope quite effectively here.

Carley continues to display immense talent in his efforts to flesh out this conflicted and at times ruthless version of the Doctor. The War Doctor still has characteristics of his other selves, but he is the one better suited to fight in a cosmic conflict of this magnitude. He is certainly the one best able to stand against Morbius.

The action sequences will likely take some re-listening to get a better sense of what is going on. The final faceoff between the War Doctor and Morbius also pays off. In a strange way, there is something inspiring about the War Doctor’s willingness to get back into the fight in spite of his condition. He also throws out some typically mocking barba at Morbius that make me enjoy this chracter more.

Anyway, it’s a strong addition to the series. The post-production work continues to be done with stellar attention.

Morbius the Mighty is likely to be considered one of my favorites in recent years.

Film Review: Charlie Swift Fixes Problems With A Loaded Gun

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Fast Charlie is a crime thriller film that is some standard mob antics, but Pierce Brosnan in the lead does make this still quite watchable. Phillip Noyce directed this film. The screenplay was written by Richard Wenk, which was based on a novel by Victor Gischter.

Brosnan is joined by talented actors such as Morena Baccarrin, Toby Huss, Sharon Gless, and James Caan in his final role before his death.

Charlie Swift is a troubleshooter for a mob boss, played by Caan. The old man is getting a bit senile, but that doesn’t keep him off a hit list. When the mob boss is apparently murdered, Swift does what any loyal hit man would do and goes on a killing spree of his own to settle the score. It seems that there is something more complicated than a revenge plan. Swift is getting older and about to retire, but he is still as lethal as ever.

Brosnan affects a somewhat dubious southern accent here, but it’s not too distracting. The man himself still maintains that famous charisma and is still a solid choice in a lead role as this,.

The movie is a solid bit of entertainment, but it still lacks a sense of any real originality in the writing. It was largely Brosnan who made this quite a bit more than something to be merely tolerated.

Film Review: A Sea of Troubles

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Cruise Ship Murder is a barely adequate murder mystery aboard a cruise ship which takes three writers to pull off. Adam Rockoff, Jeffrey Schenck, and Peter Sullivam put their heads together to come up with this forgettable entry into the catalog of Lifetime movies. Randy Carter is the director of this film which stars Skye Coyne, Ryan Carnes, Carly Reeves, Gina Hiraizumi, and a few others.

A young journalist named Olivia has a close relationship with her aunt who is about to take a cruise with her husband. The vacation takes a troubling turn when Aunt Theresa apparently falls overboard. Olivia starts her own investigation and finds out all kinds of disturbing and cliched secrets about her aunt’s extracurricular activities. When the aunt’s body turns up, an autopsy reveals that she was actually strangled before being cast to the waves. Then the typically suspicious husband is also murdered, Olivia finds that she has a lot more digging to do in order find the truth of her aunt’s brutal demise.

This turned out to be an unremarkable film without it being terrible. Who doesn’t like a good cruise ship murder mystery though. I didn’t know it was a Lifetime movie until I got into it. It had a few interesting revelations as to the motivations. The performances were fairly competent by this pretty unknown cast. Olivia managed to not be that annoying as the lead character.

It’s a flick I didn’t mind trying, but it’s a typical Lifetime film which sort has an assembly line feel to its production. It’s not worthy of a lot of hate, but it is a far cry from meriting any enthuisasm.