“The Shell Collector” is a collection of eight short stories written by Anthony Doerr and was published in 2002.  There is quite a bit of variety of characters of settings throughout, but there seems to be a theme of people traveling and coming together outside of their usual surroundings.  The various stories take place throughout the world.

I am not going to review each and every story, but I would say the ones that engaged me the most started off with the first story “The Shell Collector” in which the title character has his island beleaguered with desperate people who come to believe he has amazing abilities of healing.  I also liked “The Hunter’s Wife” where a reunion is about to take place between a couple who have not seen each other in twenty years.  It dips in and out of the past where the reader learns about their meeting and eventual separation.  “The Caretaker” and the final story, “Mkondo” are also two of the strongest entries in this anthology.

“The Caretaker” is a about a refugee from Liberia which seems to also echo the controversies in today’s reality.

This really isn’t my usual choice for reading entertainment, but I was glad to have tried it out.  Doerr does have the somewhat exasperating practice of not using many quotation marks when depicting dialogue, but he is an interesting writer overall.  Some stories grabbed me more than others, as what usually happens with anthologies.  I would still recommend for my fellow readers to give this one a try.  I may also peruse some of Doerr’s other works since my curiosity is sparked.

I think I will next check in on the exploits of Jane Hawk with “The Whispering Room” by Dean Koontz.

“It Takes You Away” is the ninth episode in the eleventh series of the revived Doctor Who and stars Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor.  Mandip Gill, Bradley Walsh, and Tosin Cole are all still along for the ride.  Ed Hime wrote this particular story which was directed by Jamie Childs

The Doctor and company arrive in present day Norway where they find a young girl in a remote cabin seemingly abandoned by her father.  They hear what sounds like a very formidable creature lurking in the trees.  The Doctor’s tenacious curiosity has her find a peculiar portal in a mirror that leads to a tunnel and another very unusual universe that can recreate the past.

This episode started off pretty well.  It has some my favorite elements in that there is an isolated cabin in the thick Norwegian forest.  A young blind girl has a father who has not been seen for days, and something ferocious appears to be stalking the area.  The companions seem to be utilized a little better in this story.

Whittaker still has some moments where she seems to be almost emulating some of her predecessors.  I guess that can work for now until the scripts start to have more reliable improvement.

There was some real effort to be original here, however the final manifestation that the entity behind this whole thing was pretty appalling.  Once again, the Doctor ends up not  being in a real fight for her life against something really intent on killing her.

Although there were some elements that showed some improvement this year, the ending comes apart for me.  I hate to say this, however there may be a need to actually bring back a more familiar foe to help remind me this is still the same show I have been following for the past thirty or so years.

 

“The Possession of Hannah Grace” is the latest horror film where a young woman is possessed and then killed during an exorcism.  It stars Shay Mitchell, Stana Katic, and Grey Damon.  Diederik Van Rooijen is the director responsible for bringing Brian Sieve’s scrip to the screen.

Shay Mitchell plays a traumatized former Boston cop who is starting a job on the midnight shift at the morgue.  The character, Megan Reed, is apparently just starting in recovery from addiction and gets on with the morgue in order to help stave off the temptations brought on by too many lonely nights.  A very unusual corpse ends up on her gurney where Megan later learns that the young woman died during a failed exorcism three months before.

Stana Katic, formerly of the television series “Castle” plays a nurse on the midnight shift and also is Megan’s sponsor in their recovery group.  It was pretty cool to see Katic in one of her first roles away from “Castle.

Films of this genre do suffer from a bit of predictability and this one is no different.  It ends up being a chase scene around the typical gloomy corridors in the bowels of the hospital.  There were some pretty creepy scenes through.

I thought Mitchell did provide a fairly engaging performance in the lead role.  Kirby Johnson played the title role and was the typical and yet unusual girl who finds herself possessed by a malevolent demon for some inexplicable reason.  The films starts off with her rather disturbing death after the exorcism goes awry.

The visual effects were fine.  Kirby Johnson was made up quite convincingly as the contorted and mutilated corpse which isn’t quite as absent of life as first assumed.

I thought Mitchell presented the audience with an interesting protagonist in the form of Megan Reed.  When the strange occurrences really start to manifest, Mitchell’s fear is convincing enough.

I did not find the film to be terrible, but there was not much I expect will really stay with me.  It’s just another movie in a long line of possession plots that provides a few moments of started gasps and jumps but not much else to make it stand out.

“The Woman in the Window” is a film noir first released in 1944 and stars Edward G. Robinson alongside Joan Bennett, Raymond Massey, and Dan Duryea. Fritz Lang directed this film which was written by Nunnally Johnson, who adapted it for the screen from a novel written by J.H. Wallis.

A psychology professor whose family has gone on vacation without him encounters a woman who modeled for a portrait displayed in a storefront near his club.  Professor Richard Wanley, played by Robinson, ends up joining the woman at her apartment for a late night drink when another man barges in and attacks him.  The professor ends up killing this overly belligerent stranger in self-defense.  He and Joan Bennett’s character end up deciding to dispose of the body and make a pact to live their lives.  Of course, the professor is friends with Massey’s role Frank Lalor, a district attorney who is involved with the investigation once the body is discovered by a curious boy scout.  Just when matters can’t seem to get any worse, the blackmailer played by Dan Duryea is on hand to really raise the stakes.

This is mostly a pretty interesting film for the most part.  I thought Robinson did well enough playing this somewhat bland intellectual who finds himself in this unusual predicament.  The performances all around were solid.  Robinson is an interesting actor who had a reputation for playing the tough, dangerous types in films.  This particular role was a bit of a departure from what he usually portrayed, however he was also known as a very compelling actor no matter what he did.

Bennett was also quite good as the mysterious model who pulls Wanley into her mess.  The two played off each other quite well as they concoct the plan to conceal their murderous mishap.

Now, the film does have an ending which was rather odd and somewhat disappointing.  It just seemed rather out of place.  In spite of my reservations, I would say there is still something worthwhile to see in this one.

“The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak was first published in 2005 and takes place during the era of Adolph Hitler’s reign over Germany leading up to and through the Second World War.

Zusak has decided to have the personification of Death relate this tale of a young orphan who is taken in by foster parents after her younger brother dies on a train.  The main protagonist, Liesel Meminger, is illiterate but is just clever enough to recognize to recognize the power of words and starts to steal books that the Nazis are wanting to destroy.

Her life is further complicated and then enriched when her foster parents take in a Jewish fist-fighter needing refuge from the Nazis. It seems the father of the household, Hans Hubermann, has a debt to pay since the young man’s father saved his life during the First World War.

The story explores the lives of the residents of Germany during what would become one of those most turbulent times in world history.  These are the people who weren’t in the battlefields but faced their own horrors of being under such a dictatorship.

It’s not hard to see why this novel has such acclaim.  There are lots of engaging and complex themes interwoven throughout this piece.  Death often seems an effective and subtle narrator.  It’s a pretty clever road to choose to have Death tell the tale.

Zusak is definitely a talented writer who works hard to differentiate himself from his peers.  His style of prose is elegant and engaging enough to have me somewhat envious of his talent.

If one started a real in depth analysis of this work, I would find it hard to know where to stop or feel like every relevant aspect was covered.  I will just conclude by suggesting that my fellow bibliophiles not pass this one up,

I am now in a book club and need to catch up with the next selection as I get to know the works of Anthony Doerr with his anthology entitled “The Shell Collector”.

 

“The Witchfinders” is the latest Doctor Who episode to star Jodie Whittaker alongside Bradley Walsh, Tosin Cole, and Mandip Gill.  Joy Wilkinson wrote this tale of the Doctor and her crew in 17th century England where they come across a witch trial. It doesn’t take long for the Doctor to realize there is indeed an unearthly menace afoot, however it’s something considerably different from what the frightened villagers had in mind.

Alan Cumming guest stars as King James who is there to supervise the hunting of these accused witches.  Cumming is a pretty accomplished and talented actor, and he is fairly amusing in this episode.

I thought this episode worked fairly well.  Whittaker still seems to rely on characteristics of previous Doctors., which could make sense since the Doctors are all one person is various forms.  It was amusing to find the Doctor’s change of gender sort of hamper her in her investigations since the king was reluctant to take her seriously.  Graham ends up getting a surprise promotion to Witchfinder General after the Doctor attempts to adopt that guise with the aid of the psychic paper.

Dear Yasmin seemed a little less superfluous this time around. I could be finally getting used to the new TARDIS crew somewhat.  That’s not to say that I necessarily am on board thinking some of the fundamentals changes to the series is some stroke of genius from head writer Chris Chibnall.  It just so happened this episode annoyed me a little less than many of the others in this current series.

Of course, this episode did the obligatory reminder of how unfairly women were regarded around 400 years ago yet had Siobhan Finneran playing the county landlord or whatever she was supposed to be.

Of course, there was the matter of people of misusing Scripture to justify these witch trials. It was mentioned, but I didn’t catch anything too heretical when the Doctor mentioned the sequel to the Old Testament which would make drowning women to test their capacity for witchcraft as rather unnecessary.

I was also pleased that an alien menace with real malevolence appeared.  It was also a new alien adversary with whom the Doctor was unfamiliar.

It was one of the better episodes of this series. It’s not one of the great ones of the series as a while, but his is still shaping up to be fairly mediocre series in spite of some of the efforts to make some radical changes.

 

 

“Instant Family” stars Mark Wahlberg, Rose Byrne, and Octavia Spencer in a film directed by Sean Anders, who shares co-writing credit with John Morris. Comedian Tig Notaro appears quite significantly as a social worker who helps facilitate adoptions. She is one half of an amusing double act with Spencer.  Notaro and Spencer were probably my favorite pairing in this particular film.  I had heard seen some slips of Notaro’s stand-up work, so I knew she could be funny. I suspect that her character in this film would not have worked quite as well without the always helpful presence of Octavia Spencer, who can often pretty much save a picture from being a total waste of time, in my estimation.

A rather hapless, impulsive couple decide to take on the noble act of foster parenting and of course find themselves in over their heads.  Wahlberg and Byrne are saddled with some fairly cliché roles in a film of this sort, however they are not devoid of any charm or cleverness.  The problem is that whatever wit this film manages to pull off does not stay consistent.  There are just some moments of utter stupidity.

The three children at the center of this thing are appropriately cute. Isabela Moner plays the oldest of the three children and is the typical overly rebellious teen-ager who has understandable trust issues.  The issue of these kids being Hispanic being fostered by a Caucasian couple had to be somewhat hammered home rather clumsily.  A scene where this was addressed between the couple and the social workers just came off as rather stupid, to be honest.  There did seem to be a bit of an over emphasis on this thing of adopting children of different ethnicities throughout the other characters who were entering this complex world of foster parenting.

Personally, I didn’t entirely dislike the movie, but I think it could have done with a little less corniness.  The casting was fine. Wahlberg has done movies of this sort before and can be rather amusing.  Byrne also performed reasonably well, but both leads could have used a better script, as with any competent actor.  There were some successful comedic moments, but there were other moments that just could have used a bit more subtlety.

It’s not a movie that I minded seeing very much, however whatever sentimentality or empathy I experienced while watching it isn’t likely to stay with me that long, which is a shame considering the message behind it is such an important one.

“Creed II” is the sequel to the 2015 “Creed”, which is a continuation of the “Rocky” franchise.  Michael B. Jordan reprises his role as boxer Adonis Creed, the son of Apollo Creed, who was killed off in “Rocky IV”, during the match with the absurdly imposing Russian fighter Ivan Drago, who was played by Dolph Lundgren.  Sylvester Stallone is back as favorite cinematic underdog Rocky Balboa.

Steven Caple, Jr. directed this latest installment co-written by Stallone and Juel Taylor and does so with style.

When I first heard this film would be revisiting the Drago rivalry, I was stricken with some exasperation at what I considered to be a lack of originality.  Now, I think it makes a strange sort of Hollywood sense to explore this storyline.  Ivan Drago killed Apollo Creed in the ring in “Rocky IV” which really changed the course of what could have been Adonis’ life.  Florian Munteanu brings his impressive physique to the screen to play the part of Viktor Drago and does a decent job in the role.  There was actually an attempt to bring a bit more of an explanation as to why this victory was personally important to the Dragos.

The “Rocky” films typically had a well-worn pattern, and this film does little to really break that, however the performances are compelling enough to shrug that off.  The fight scenes were pretty sensational in spite of the lapse in realism.  Jordan is an excellent actor and pays off the more implausible circumstances quite effectively.  I am not usually a fan of the practice of trash talking I sporting events, but I found myself appreciating the swagger of the character in this film.  That’s probably because Adonis is quite broken throughout this ordeal and finds himself with other obligations that often worry him and then inspire him.

Stallone also hits the right notes of nostalgia and sympathy throughout the film.  Rocky Balboa has his own emotional journey as well as he has become estranged from his son for some reason.  He still has to overcome his sense of guilt in not stopping the fight that claimed the life of rival turned friend, Apollo Creed more than three decades ago.  Stallone does not have the greatest range as an actor, but he still manages to keep this role pretty compelling and relevant even if someone else is actually the main protagonist.

Tessa Thompson is as charming as ever as the aspiring songwriter girlfriend of Adonis.  There were times when the brief exploration of her career felt a little forced in.  I guess it makes sense to give her own dreams and aspirations separate from Adonis’ path, the effort to showcase her musical talent in this movie did not seem to fit this particular story all that naturally.  I liked her portrayal of Bianca Taylor though, and she was by no means unimportant or unnecessary to the film, but there were some moments I thought she could have been used a little more effectively.

I also just like seeing Phylicia Rashad onscreen.  She returns as Creed Sr.’s widow and adoptive mother to Adonis.  A lot of the ways she moved the story forward could have been as easily accomplished by Thompson’s character, so the necessity of her being in this one can be questioned. In spite of that, I was still glad to see her.  She is too good for me to really complain about her participation in much of anything.

The film doesn’t shake up the formula of the franchise very much.  Much of it is still quite predictable, especially to long time “Rocky” viewers, however the performances made all of that forgivable, and there wasn’t an abundance of dialogue that made me wince with despair.

It’s a film with some of the familiar shortcomings of its predecessors in this franchise, but there is plenty that works well enough for me to shrug those off quite comfortably.

“The Front Runner” is a film chronicling the collapse of Democratic Senator Gary Hart’s 1988 presidential campaign after the exposure of an affair.  Hugh Jackman stars as the disgraced senator from Colorado. Vera Farmiga plays his wife, Oletha Hart.  Alfred Molina, J.K. Simmons, and Sara Paxton are also part of the well-chosen cast. Jason Reitman directed this piece and co-wrote it alongside Matt Bai and Jay Carson.

Jackman is unsurprisingly quite compelling in his portrayal of Senator Hart.  It’s not that easy to sympathize with Hart in the grand scheme of things, however Jackman does well to bring out the other more human side of the story.  It is easy to see why so many people were captivated by Hart and probably disappointed by the behavior that led to the demise of his presidential run.  I don’t quite remember how Hart presented himself at the time, but Jackman’s interpretation does appear quite accurate.

A rather surprising facet the film puts forth is the question of how far reporters should go to pursue the story.  It delves into the apparent sleaziness of them basically staking out Hart’s townhome to catch him in a compromising position.  It also explores the impact and emotional consequences Donna Rice faced when she was exposed as the other woman.  I had not heard of Sara Paxton before, however she seemed pretty convincing as the beleaguered Rice.  Really, there wasn’t a performance in this film that I found unnatural or problematic.

The movie does spend quite a bit of time displaying the initial campaign before the big story broke.  It takes some patience to get to the meat of the story, but upon reflection I think the wait was worth it.

Hart was a charismatic and complicated guy apparently as many politicians are. The movie does a good job of covering many aspects of this situation and avoiding just telling the audience as to what side to come down on.  I could side with the reporters sometimes and yet still agree with some concerns Hart raised.  The concerns I could agree with had to deal with how the journalists sometimes conducted themselves to get the story.  I probably wouldn’t have much sympathy for Hart’s political positions.  This is one movie where some ambiguity is tolerable.

I thought Hart raised some good points regarding the methods the reporters used to discover his infidelity even through he clearly was rather deficient in the morality department.  How much intrusion should his wife and children have suffered from the press after his affair was discovered?  One the other hand, the reporters depicted have a pretty strong point in that this man wanted to be President of the United States and how he treats his marriage could be indicative of his views on ethics and morality.  Should the people place that much trust in someone who could not keep his vows to his wife?

It’s not a movie that will get the heart racing with excitement, but it is thought-provoking.  The cast all gave solid performances.  The film seems to drag a little at times due to the various meetings and debates, however I am not sure how could have been left out since that’s how probably much of the decisions were reached.

It’s probably not a film that everyone would appreciate, but I think it raises some interesting points for discussion.  Hart did continue to have a public service career even after this hullaballoo and some depiction of the aftermath of Hart’s scandal could have been explored a bit more.

The strengths of this effort significantly outweigh the weaknesses here.  It turned out to be a pretty good film.

“Kerblam!” is the latest Doctor Who episode starring Jodie Whittaker in the title role. Kerblam! is an interstellar mail service that finds the Doctor in the time vortex and drops off a package.  The Doctor and her companions are intrigued when a request for help is within the package, and they travel to the enormous moon-sized warehouse to find the source of the plea.

This is one of the better episodes of the eleventh series of the revived Doctor Who.  It’s still not great, but it’s a little less preachy.  Pete McTighe is the scriptwriter and still doesn’t pull off anything particularly special with this contribution.  It’s not a complete wreck, but I am not expecting much of an improvement in the ratings.

Whittaker has some decent moments, but she cannot quite pull off the sense of authority her predecessors in the role could when the Doctor is threatening who she thinks is behind the mystery of the week.

The main cast are fine once again.  Bradley Walsh remains my favorite, but I found myself liking Mandip Gill’s character a little more.  Yasmin Khan isn’t really that bad, but she still feels somewhat superfluous when compared to the more interesting dynamic between Graham and Ryan.

It’s a better episode this time around, but not by much.