Reviews and More

Shia LaBeouf is one of those actors for whom I harbor an irrational dislike. I find him to be quite annoying in movies (the only film he’s starred in that I even remotely enjoyed was Transformers), plus I think he’s ugly and whiny. And yeah, these are rather shallow assessments on my part, but it’s no worse than someone liking Zac Efron just because he’s “hot”.

Anyway, the thought of LaBeouf as an action hero is laughable — and yet his last three films, Transformers, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Eagle Eye, were all popcorn flicks with lots of chase sequences, fights, and explosions. I held off on seeing Eagle Eye at the theater, but couldn’t resist renting it this past weekend. Not because of Shia, of course, but because I’d heard that the plot is so ridiculous that it would be good for lots of laughs. It was.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Jerry Shaw (played by LaBeouf) is just an average Joe whose string of part-time jobs has finally landed him at a place called Copy Cabana. He’s always short on cash and has to duck his landlord, but other than that, he seems like a normal guy.

Then one day he gets some terrible news: his twin brother Ethan, who worked for the Department of Defense, was killed in a traffic accident. After attending Ethan’s funeral, strange things start happening to Jerry — beginning with a mysterious deposit of $750,000 into his bank account. He returns home to find that a large cache of weapons and bomb-making materials have been planted in his home, and then he gets a call from a woman telling him that he has to obey orders from now on or risk arrest as a terrorist. Jerry starts running.

He’s picked up by FBI agent Thomas Morgan (Billy Bob Thornton), but while he’s locked in the interrogation room, the unknown caller makes contact again and tells Jerry that he’ll be provided with an escape route. He takes it, eventually ending up in a car with Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan), who is similarly being controlled by phone calls, under threat that her young son Sam (Cameron Boyce) will be harmed while away at band camp.

From there, Jerry and Rachel continue following instructions received via cell phone. Every time they try to disobey, they’re given an instant reminder of how powerful the unknown entity on the other end is, and they’re forced back into compliance.

As the plot unravels itself, we learn that a supercomputer named ARIA is making the phone calls and controlling the whole operation, with the objective being to assassinate the President and all those in the succession order. Jerry is needed in order to pass some biometric scans that will identify him as his twin Ethan, and Rachel is needed because Sam will play an unwitting yet critical role in the assassination attempt.

My Reaction: Well, what can I say? Eagle Eye was every bit as dumb and unrealistic as the plot summary makes it sound. A supercomputer was able to control all those people? Yeah, right. Because the computer felt that true democracy was being threatened by the executive branch of government? Whatever. I mean, this movie was simply an excuse for action sequences that were held together by the thinnest of plotlines. And while I do think that those types of films have their place — especially in the summer blockbuster season when this originally came out — Eagle Eye just wasn’t my cup of tea.

I think the film would have been a heck of a lot better if some terrorist organization had been orchestrating the whole assassination attempt. But to have it be a supercomputer was just incredibly stupid. Haven’t we already seen this kind of thing with HAL and I, Robot? It’s just not original. Sure, a terrorist organization wouldn’t have been original either, but at least then the filmmakers would have the opportunity to develop an individual villain or two with original characteristics. But a computer… just dumb.

I won’t even go into all the unrealistic things this computer could control, such as closed circuit security systems at the airport (when Jerry and Rachel had their briefcase scanned), but suffice it to say that it was beyond ridiculous. Having the computer be able to cause a specific power line to snap off and hit a moving target had to be the kicker. How can audiences eat this crap up?

Overall, I thought Eagle Eye was pretty bad all the way around. The plot was paper thin, the acting was god-awful, and the action sequences were banal. I give this film 3.0 stars out of 10 and wish that Shia LaBeouf would just go away.

After a month-long hiatus, Desperate Housewives was back with an all-new episode last night. It was called “Home is the Place”, and helped move a few of the storylines along ever so slightly. I don’t know if we’ll ever get an answer to the Dave Williams mystery at this point, but thanks to the writers’ bad decision to drag things out so dang long, I just don’t care anymore. Anyway, here’s what happened.

Gaby/Carlos: Now that Carlos has his sight back, he’s decided that he doesn’t want to massage flabby old people anymore. Gaby thinks that’s fine, especially since she ran into an old colleague of his who’s offering Carlos a six-figure salary to get back into the world of finance. Carlos would much rather work with the blind at the community center, and tries to resist Gaby’s arguments for taking the higher paying job. In the end, however, she convinces him that he owes the family a better life since they had to make all kinds of sacrifices when he was blind.

Bree/Andrew: With Andrew and Alex’s wedding coming up, it’s time for Bree to meet Alex’s mother. She’s kind of low-class, so of course they don’t get along. Moreover, she has an annoying habit of “calling” things, as in, “I call Christmas with the boys!”. Bree finds all of this out of line and annoying, so she finally plays her trump card: she bought the boys a house right there on Wisteria Lane.

Susan/Lee: With Jackson out of town and Bob and Lee fighting about who knows what, Susan and Lee decide to head out to a club for a night of dancing and bitching. They end up having a good time and getting drunk out of their minds — and they wake up half-dressed in Susan’s bed the next morning. Susan, who can’t remember a thing, thinks that she and Lee might have had sex. When she finally confronts him, however, he sets her straight… by reminding her that he’s not.

Edie/Dave: Dave is sinking deeper into the abyss of mental illness, and Edie finally realizes that something is wrong with him. Things come to a head when she catches him muttering to himself at the kitchen table in the middle of the night, and he confesses that he was married once before. Edie doesn’t like the deception, so she kicks him out.

Scavo Family: Bob realizes that Preston has actually been posing as Porter, so he tells the Scavos that they need to get Porter back ASAP or he’ll be forced to reveal everything to the judge. When Lynette learns that Preston has been in contact with Porter the whole time, she stoops to emotional blackmail to get Preston to spill everything.

My Reaction: I find both the Dave Williams and Porter Scavo stories incredibly boring, so I pretty much tune out whenever they’re on the screen. Sorry, but neither of these guys is interesting enough to warrant a season-long arc. Give me a break.

Fortunately, I thought other parts of the episode were interesting. I particularly liked the Lee and Susan interaction. It was good to see them becoming friends after getting off on the wrong foot five years ago. They actually are very much alike — at least as far as love of gossip goes. I hope the writers continue to play up that friendship angle in more eps to come.

I also liked the Gaby and Carlos storyline. I know a lot of viewers think Gaby is just incredibly shallow and hasn’t changed much over the years (e.g. she’s still as materialistic as ever), but let’s face it: she’s the most believable out of all the wives. And actually, I think she was right to make Carlos take the higher-paying job. They’ve been struggling for a long time now, so they need to get ahead a little bit before doing the “charity work”.

Overall, this was a decent episode that was heaps better than the ones immediately preceding the hiatus. Let’s hope things continue to improve for the rest of the season!

Looking at the top films at the box office this weekend, it’s hard to distinguish the current list from last week’s entry. That’s because the top seven remained in the exact same order, and there were only two new entries on the list overall.

Marley & Me, the comedy starring Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson, remained the No. 1 movie in America for the second straight week, earning $24.1 million to bring its total gross to $106.5 million — which, I believe, marks the first Aniston film to break the $100 million plateau.

Valkyrie continued to surprise experts with its staying power. The film doesn’t seem to be hurt by Tom Cruise’s presence, and after earning another $14 million over the weekend (in 4th place), has now grossed a very strong $60 million.

The only two films in the top 10 that weren’t on last week’s list are Doubt, which earned $5 million for 8th place, and Slumdog Millionaire, which brought in $4.8 million in 10th place.

Here’s the complete top 10 at the box office for the weekend ending 1/4/09:

1. Marley & Me, $24.1 million
2. Bedtime Stories, $20.3 million
3. Curious Case of Benjamin Button, $18.4 million
4. Valkyrie, $14 million
5. Yes Man, $13.9 million
6. Seven Pounds, $10 million
7. Tale of Despereaux, $7 million
8. Doubt, $5 million
9. The Day the Earth Stood Still, $4.9 million
10. Slumdog Millionaire, $4.8 million

I live in a pretty nice neighborhood, but I still worry about my family’s safety. You just never know when something bad is going to happen, which is why I really want to get a home security system.

I’ve been looking at a few different ADT products because my brother works for the company as an installer. He recommends one of the newer systems that come with the SafePass touchpad that allows you to wave a tag in front of the control pad in order to arm or disarm the system. This means there are no codes to memorize, which makes it easier for everyone — including children — to operate the alarm. What a great idea!

With a six-year-old in the house, I want the peace of mind that will come with having an ADT security system in place. Getting one installed is a priority for my family in this new year!

After taking about a month off from my quest to read all of Agatha Christie’s mystery novels in chronological order, I recently decided to pick up where I left off: with the 1948 novel Taken at the Flood, which was published in the UK under the name There is a Tide. This was yet another Hercule Poirot novel, but as I’ve said on numerous other occasions, the famous Belgian detective simply isn’t as much fun without sidekick Arthur Hastings around. Nevertheless, having Poirot conduct an investigation is definitely more interesting than having some random character do it, so I guess I ought to be grateful. At any rate, Taken at the Flood turned out to be a decent book — and probably would have been no matter which detective Christie chose to plug in.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Gordon Cloade is a generous, wealthy man who freely shares his money with his brothers and their wives. Indeed, none of the Cloades have to live frugally, even though their personal income might be very scant. No matter what they need, be it home repairs, money to cover gambling debts, or funds for daily expenses, Gordon is ready to supply it. This comfortable arrangement continues until Gordon marries a young woman named Rosaleen, and then dies before having a chance to change his will. Now Rosaleen has inherited everything, while the immediate family gets nothing.

Rosaleen herself seems like a kind enough person and probably would be willing to share her new-found wealth with the family, but she is under the thumb of her brother David Hunter. David is a somewhat malicious man who enjoys seeing the Cloades struggle to make ends meet now that they’ve been cut off from Gordon’s money. It serves them right for living beyond their means to begin with, he says.

The whole situation changes when a stranger arrives in town claiming to know details about Rosaleen’s first husband, Robert Underhay. Underhay was presumed to have died in Africa, but the stranger, a man named Enoch Arden, hints that he has evidence Underhay is still alive. That would render Rosaleen’s marriage to Gordon Cloade invalid, and send the money back to the family. Arden tries to use this information to blackmail David, who quickly agrees to pay.

The next day, however, Arden is found dead in his room at the local inn. His skull has been crushed, and it looks like a clear case of murder — particularly since David Hunter’s lighter is found at the scene, as well as a tube of women’s lipstick. But David apparently has a rock-solid alibi for the time of death, so local police are unsure of how to proceed. That’s when the Cloade family hires Poirot.

The rest of the novel deals with Poirot’s investigation as he works to make sense out of everything that’s happened. After the usual witness interviews, fact-checking, and deductions, Poirot does manage to solve the convoluted case of Enoch Arden’s death.

My Reaction: Like most Christie novels, Taken at the Flood was very difficult to get into, owing to the fact that there were so many characters to become acquainted with. The fact that they were almost all from the Cloade family and the fact that Christie only painted them with the broadest of strokes didn’t help matters much. And then there was the whole prologue-to-flashback aspect to consider, another wrinkle that made getting into the story extremely difficult.

Once I had the characters straight, however, the story began to be far more interesting. The mystery of Enoch Arden’s true identity, as well as the whispers about David Hunter not really being Rosaleen’s brother were added layers to the murder, and had me guessing all the way until the end. I particularly liked how Christie pulled a fast one on the readers by making Rosaleen the imposter. I have to admit that I fell for the misdirection and never even thought to look at Rosaleen very closely.

Overall, I thought Taken at the Flood was a quality murder mystery. Once you get past the beginning, it’s smooth sailing towards a good story and a clever, satisfying ending.

It usually doesn’t take all that much for me to enjoy sports movies. I love all sports, and even though I know there’s a very limited range of plots that sports movies can adopt, I still watch as many as I can. So I guess it’s no surprise that I picked up The Game Plan the other weekend, a 2007 Disney film that I thought would be about football, but turned out to be very family-oriented.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Joe Kingman (played Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) is the star quarterback for the Boston Rebels football team. His good looks and winning ways have him on top of the the sports world, and he’s also busy padding his bank account with millions from easy endorsements and other business ventures. With the Rebels poised to make a run for the championship, Kingman is trying to keep his focus on football — but that all changes when an 8-year-old girl shows up at his penthouse one day.

The girl’s name is Peyton Kelly (Madison Pettis). She claims that she’s Joe’s daughter from a marriage that ended just about 8 years ago. Peyton says her mom dropped her off at Joe’s place on her way to help children in Africa. She’ll be gone for a month, and thought this would be a good chance for Joe and Peyton to get to know each other.

Joe is incredulous at first, as he didn’t even know that he had a daughter. In fact, he wants to submit to paternity tests, but his agent Stella (Kyra Sedgwick) fears that if word of the tests got out, Joe would lose out on a bunch of endorsements. So Joe reluctantly takes Peyton in.

The rest of the film then shows how Joe, a confirmed bachelor who is used to having everything just so, gets to know his daugther and accept her girly ways. From ballet classes to having his possessions bedazzled with beads, the process is slow and difficult. Eventually, however, Joe grows to love Peyton and can’t imagine a life without her. When he’s actually faced with that prospect, he realizes that Peyton is the best thing that has ever happened to him.

My Reaction: As I said, I was expecting this to be more about football — maybe like that other Disney football movie Invincible. But as soon as I realized where the plot was headed, I convinced my son to give the film a try and we ended up watching it together. The Game Plan is definitely a lot better if you see it with your kids.

Anyway, the plot was very predictable — but that always happens in sports movies, so I wasn’t bothered by that too much here. I thought there were some cute scenes and I laughed out loud a couple of times, which was a bit surprising. However, I could have done without the ballet subplot, and as soon as it was clear that Joe and the teacher were supposed to fall for each other, I knew something was up with Peyton’s mom. Because otherwise, this being a Disney movie, the ending would have had Joe and the mom getting back together for form a happy family.

I do wish there was more football action, but I guess that’s too much to expect, considering the fact that this isn’t really a football movie. Oh, well — that’s what I get for not reading the description on the back of the box before renting!

Overall, The Game Plan was a decent family movie that parents can enjoy with the 10 and under set. I give it 6.0 stars out of 10.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve read a truly challenging novel that has forced me to think about the larger themes and motifs that the writer is addressing. Usually, I’m quite content to take things at face value and leave the talk of symbolism and underlying meaning to those in college literature classes. But this is simply impossible to do with Virginia Woolf’s thought-provoking masterpiece Mrs. Dalloway, a novel that I now wish I’d read a long time ago so that I could avoid making the same mistakes as the title character.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): 52-year-old Clarissa Dalloway, the wife of a member of Parliament, is busily getting ready for a big party she’s throwing later in the evening. She’s out walking the London streets to buy flowers and run other errands, and we immediately jump into her thoughts as they flit from one subject to another. At one moment, she’s thinking about a summer spent at the Brouton estate when she was 18; at the next, she’s thinking about something completely different after having run into someone she knows.

Slowly, the readers come to develop a full sense of what Clarissa is like based on these thoughts and memories, which will have a direct impact on how she interacts with a few important guests at her event later on.

Meanwhile, the point of view in the novel shifts from Clarissa to several other characters, including her former boyfriend Peter Walsh, her daughter Elizabeth, Elizabeth’s friend and teacher Doris Kilman, and even two characters who ostensibly have nothing at all to do with Clarissa, Septimus Warren Smith and his wife Rezia.

Because of the way the other characters think of her or talk about her, Mrs. Dalloway is at the center of all the action, even when she is not directly involved in particular scenes. Everything eventually culminates in the party, at which point the reader gains a fuller understanding of what Clarissa is all about.

My Reaction: I realize that the summary I just gave was a bit simplistic, but it’s hard to talk of Mrs. Dalloway in terms of plot, since the whole thing consists of short conversations or internal monologues. So putting the summary aside for the time being, I just want to discuss what I was able to take away from the book.

I loved how Woolf showed Clarissa living mostly in the past. Sure, she enjoyed her parties, participated in her marriage and family life, and went through her daily motions, but Clarissa’s thoughts were always stuck 30 years ago during that summer at Brouton. She incongruously thinks of how Sally Seton’s kiss was the best moment of her life, she keeps reliving all of Sally’s escapades, etc. even though she hadn’t had contact with Sally since that time.

And because Clarissa kept revisiting her memories, she built that time and those people into idealistic representations that their present incarnations could in no way compete against — which is why she was so reluctant to actually sit down and talk to Peter and Sally at the party.

This, along with the whole narrative about Septimus Smith’s suicide, was a brilliant way for Woolf to show that Clarissa’s main issue is not wanting to face up to her own mortality. Her underlying fear of death caused her to focus her thoughts continually on the best time of her life — when she was young, in perfect health, and had her whole life in front of her.

Any reader can identify with what Clarissa was going through. After all, just think back to when you were 18. You felt invincible, like you had all the time in the world to do everything you wanted. Anything and everything was possible, and death was something that happened to old people.

But then as you get older, as things don’t turn out exactly how you expected, as your life slowly passes by and you haven’t accomplished anything significant, instead of looking forward (to death), you’re much more inclined to cast your thoughts backward towards the happy times of your youth, which is precisely what Clarissa was doing.

Since I am facing many of the same issues that Clarissa deals with in the novel (though at a younger age), I really enjoyed this novel and took a lot away from it. I have a feeling that Mrs. Dalloway will require at least one or two more readings to pick up additional nuances that might have been lost the first time through. That’s ok, it’s a tremendous book that I won’t mind devouring once more!

As if there aren’t enough dancing programs on television, NBC has decided to get into the game with something called Superstars of Dance. This show follows on the heels of the ABC hit Dancing with the Stars, the FOX show So You Think You Can Dance, and a handful of dance series on cable networks. Ugh, enough is enough already!

Superstars of Dance will premiere on January 4, and will feature professional dancers from around the world competing against each other in different disciplines. I don’t think this sounds like a formula for success, since half the appeal of the other programs in this genre is that the contestants are either celebrities or regular joes trying to get their big break.

I mean, is anyone going to know — or care about — the “professionals” who will be appearing on the show? Can you even name a single professional dancer? I can’t, and you better believe I’ll find better things to do than tune into Superstars of Dance. The only excitement to come out of a show like this would be if a contestant had to withdraw because of Plantar Fasciitis or something. Um, no thanks!

I’m betting the show doesn’t get picked up for a second season. I doubt that this will have the kind of broad appeal that the other dancing programs do.

Political corruption is so commonplace these days that we hardly bat an eyelash when we hear about the latest scandal involving a member of the U.S. government. A Senator was busted for propositioning a man in an airport bathroom? Someone else sent sexually explicit text messages to an aide? Yet another pol was busted with a high-priced prostitute? Ho hum. The only thing that seems to really shock us is when the culprits are so brazen about their actions that they practically dare someone to bust them (witness Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s attempts to sell a U.S. Senate seat).

So by today’s standards, former president Richard M. Nixon’s role in the Watergate break-in and subsequent cover-up attempts seem rather mundane. Is there anyone out there who thinks a similar act by a sitting president would consume the news cycle for more than two whole years today? I don’t. But back in the 1970s, it was a stunning act of deceit, one that caused Nixon to resign and reinforced the public’s distrust of government.

Nixon never admitted to wrongdoing, but he did come very close to it when he sat down with British journalist David Frost for an interview a few years after leaving office. Frost was supposed to be a softball kind of journalist, a playboy type of talk show personality rather than a hard-hitting interviewer, so it seemed odd that he would even be interested in sitting down with Nixon anyway. Apparently, Frost thought that he’d be able to make big bucks from advertisers if he got the president to talk about Watergate and Vietnam.

So Frost put up $600,000 of his own money to get Nixon, hired a team of professional researchers to help him with the preparation, and began filming the four days of interviews. At that point, he only had 33% of the necessary outside funding, and it appeared that the whole idea would turn into a colossal failure.

But on the very last day of the interview, Frost buckled down and started hammering Nixon on Watergate. He elicited the now-infamous quote that “if the President does it, it’s not illegal” and got Nixon to hesitate for a long moment when put on the spot about admitting guilt. Based on those two things, Frost was able to make a fortune from the tapes, Nixon was able to unburden his conscience (as much as possible without actually signing a confession), and 400 million people around the world tuned in to watch the interviews.

The Ron Howard film Frost/Nixon takes a behind-the-scenes look at what happened prior to, during, and after those interviews, mostly from Frost’s point of view.

My Reaction: Although I wasn’t exactly expecting a gripping political thriller here, I wasn’t quite ready for the utter snoozefest that Frost/Nixon turned out to be. I admit that I was suckered by all the rave reviews this film has earned from critics like Roger Ebert and Peter Travers, and decided to see this one based on the strength of their comments alone. Ugh, that’ll teach me!

First of all, neither of the lead characters in this film were likable at all. On the one hand, you have the unbalanced, paranoid, defiant Richard Nixon (played by Frank Langella), and though Ron Howard tries to show Nixon’s vulnerabilities and loneliness, it simply wasn’t enough to make me feel anything for the man. On the other hand, there was the shallow, just-happy-to-be-here David Frost (Michael Sheen), who cared more about making a killing off his investment than about uncovering any truths. Again, I couldn’t sympathize or otherwise care about what was happening to this guy.

Yes, I know these are historical figures and therefore the actors can’t very well turn them into something they weren’t, but still… what I’m driving at here is that I don’t understand why anyone would think that this would be a compelling topic for a feature film instead of, say, a documentary.

Also, I was decidedly underwhelmed by what people consider to be Nixon’s “admission of guilt”. He paused and looked a little remorseful. That was it? Sorry, but if that’s the highlight of David Frost’s journalistic career, I really don’t understand the big deal was about. It wasn’t exactly Jack Nicholson screaming, “You’re goddamn right I did!” in A Few Good Men, know what I mean?

Frost/Nixon might appeal to those who first saw the actual interviews as they aired in the late ’70s or to those students of history who are intensely interested in the Nixon administration. But for average moviegoers like me, I think the whole project falls flat. I give it 4.0 stars out of 10, and wouldn’t sit through it again if you paid me!

One of my goals as an avid reader is to get through the entire list of 100 books designated by the Observer (UK) newspaper as the greatest novels of all time. I’ve currently covered about 65 percent of the titles, with the most recent being The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers. Unlike most of the other entries on the list, I’d never even heard of this book or its writer, but since the work was described as “a prewar invasion-scare spy thriller by a writer later shot for his part in the Irish republican rising”, I figured it would be a fun and engrossing read. Unfortunately, this is the kind of novel that doesn’t stand the test of time and came off as boring rather than exciting.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The novel is told from the point of view of Carruthers, a young clerk in the Foreign Office whose friends have all gone away from London for the holidays. Faced with the prospect of spending a couple of boring weeks all alone in the city, Carruthers seizes on a late arriving invitation to go “yachting”. The invitation is from a man named Davies, whom Carruthers doesn’t know very well, having met him just once before. Nevertheless, Carruthers packs his bag, gathers numerous supplies that Davies asked for, like a stove, compass, spring plungers, and other miscellany, and sets off to meet up with the ship, the Dulcibella.

Upon arriving at port, Carruthers is shocked to discover that this adventure won’t be like any other yachting excursion he’s been on. Instead of a luxury boat with as crew to handle all the work, the Dulcibella is an old, cramped, creaking thing, with Davies and Carruthers as the only passengers. What’s more, their destination, according to Davies, won’t be some exotic resort like Monte Carlo, but instead will be the Frisian Islands near Germany. Despite all this, Carruthers decides to stick it out with Davies.

As the two head towards the Frisian Islands, the reader slowly learns about their individual characters and about the true purpose of the trip. Davies is an exceptional seaman who knows everything there is to know about boats, maps, charts, and tides. Carruthers, while woefully inexperienced on a boat, is a quick learner, unafraid of manual work, and possesses a sharp intellect that ends up serving him well on the real mission, which is to expose a ring of German spies working out a plan to invade England from the north.

The rest of the novel then deals with various aspects of the suspected invasion plan, telling how Davies got his wind up in the first place, how he thinks the spies can be found out for sure, and how he and Carruthers actually go about doing just that. The novel is highly detailed in respect to nautical distances, tide levels, and the like, so if you don’t follow along with the accompanying maps, a lot of the action will be lost on you.

My Reaction: I was looking forward to reading this “spy thriller”, but let me tell you, The Riddle of the Sands is hardly thrilling in the modern sense of the word! To say that the action unfolds at a leisurely pace would be generous; Childers takes his own sweet time about every little thing in the novel. In fact, if I hadn’t read a summary of the novel prior to picking it up, I wouldn’t have known what it was about until 14 long chapters into the narrative!

Even when the purpose was revealed, the plot seemed kind of ridiculous. Would two men really take on an entire ring of spies without contacting English authorities for backup or help? Sure, I guess Davies brought up some objections, like not wanting to get Dollman’s daughter in trouble or not wanting to run the risk of having an official laugh in his face, but still… it seemed like quite a stretch that two guys would be able to pull off everything that Davies and Carruthers did.

Aside from the plot problem, I do have to give Childers credit for providing some in-depth characterization for the two leads. The reader actually comes to learn a lot about Davies and Carruthers, and I enjoyed the fact that the two men were so vastly different, and yet were able to operate on the same page most of the time, eventually getting to the point where they knew what the other was thinking and could depend on each other to act in certain ways in certain situations.

Another positive point in the book’s favor is that the writing is very good. Childers manages to be engaging more often than not, which is quite a feat given what little is going on most of the time. But the fact that I stuck with this rather long book despite how boring it was is a testament to the writing and the characters, so the experience wasn’t as painful as it might have been.

Overall, The Riddle of the Sands has a very dated feel to it. It’s not the kind of thriller that fans of John Le Carre or other more recent spy novelists are familiar with, but I suppose the book has a place for history buffs. Just know that you’re in for a long journey if you decide to tackle this title!

I’d heard about something called The Last Lecture back when it first started generating buzz over a year ago, but I’m always slow to try out the latest “Internet sensations” because these things tend to disappoint more often than not. But after all this time, the story of Randy Pausch, the former Carnegie Mellon University professor who bravely battled pancreatic cancer still resonates for millions of people. I finally read the book and watched the actual lecture over the weekend — and both were pretty amazing.

Pausch’s last lecture was a talk given at CMU as part of a regular series that the university put on for students. Basically, professors in different disciplines are asked to put together a “final talk”, something that they’d want to leave students with if they never spoke in their area of expertise again.

Paush, a computer science prof, went in a more literal direction, as he had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer and had only a few months left to live. He decided to talk not strictly about computer science, but about how to live a good life. To him, that meant achieving your childhood dreams and helping others to achieve theirs.

The lecture, which lasted for one hour and sixteen minutes, covers a variety of topics, starting with Pausch’s childhood, and moving on to the personal milestones he has achieved, the highlights of his teaching career, and carving out what he hopes to be his legacy.

In the book, Pausch explains that he deliberately decided not to talk about the most important things in his life, his wife and children, because he didn’t think he would be able to hold it together for that long. But nevertheless, we see at the end that it was really all for them anyway.

The book, which followed the lecture, is obviously similar to the original talk and uses many of the same quotes and photographs (Pausch used slides in his lecture). But the book of course contains a lot more stuff that Pausch couldn’t fit into the lecture, and gives even more detailed information on some of the things he touched upon in the original talk. I found that watching the lecture first and then reading the book was a good way to take in the whole experience.

While there’s not exactly a lot of ground-breaking advice in Pausch’s Last Lecture, the professor’s charisma and upbeat delivery make the time fly by, and of course the message is worthwhile for everyone.

Check out the video on YouTube by following the link below. Pausch’s Last Lecture has been viewed more than 8.2 million times to date — a staggering number for sure!

Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture

This was a big weekend in Hollywood, with lots of new releases hitting the theaters in time for Christmas. Of particular interest to tabloid watchers was the head-to-head battle of famous exes Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, with the romantic comedy Marley & Me going up against The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Well, Team Jen fans can rejoice, as early returns indicate Marley & Me raked in $37 million to claim the top spot at the box office. Despite mixed reviews, this film about a dog that acts like he’s been drinking from the nespresso machine a bit too much won the hearts of moviegoers — just as the original book did.

Benjamin Button, on the other hand, received generally good reviews, but just didn’t carry the same family appeal as Marley & Me. This film, based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, earned $27.2 million, which was good enough for third place.

The Adam Sandler comedy Bedtime Stories had a strong debut with $28.1 million in gross receipts to take the No. 2 spot, while the Tom Cruise WWII thriller Valkyrie earned $21.5 million in fourth place.

Another new release, The Spirit, cracked the list in the No. 9 spot with $6.5 million in ticket sales.

Here’s the complete Top 10 at the box office for the weekend ending 12/28/08:

1. Marley & Me, $37 million
2. Bedtime Stories, $28.1 million
3. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, $27.2 million
4. Valkyrie, $21.5 million
5. Yes Man, $16.5 million
6. Seven Pounds, $13.4 million
7. The Tale of Despereaux, $9.4 million
8. The Day the Earth Stood Still, $7.9 million
9. The Spirit, $6.5 million
10. Four Christmases, $5 million