Movie #11 of 2018:
Ocean’s 8 (2018)
Overall this is a fun heist movie, although the pacing lags near the end and some plot holes make it harder to enjoy the clever bits. Still, it’s easily on par with Ocean’s Twelve and Thirteen, and the new cast is great. I don’t know that I need to see this film ever again, but I would be down for a sequel.
★★★☆☆
Book #112 of 2018:
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
I like to revisit this 1953 dystopian classic at least once a decade or so, and I inevitably find it richer and deeper whenever I do. Author Ray Bradbury has packed an incredible amount of ideas into such a slim volume, and although the overall thrust of firemen burning books has become a cultural shorthand for censorship, the original novel offers nuances to reward and challenge a close reader. Upon this reading, Fahrenheit 451 strikes me as less a warning about societal consequences of restrictive attitudes and more a personal exhortation to engage critically with the narratives we receive. It’s a helpful and hopeful message, conveying the author’s firm belief in humanity’s ability to rise from the ashes.
★★★★★
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Book #111 of 2018:
Their Fractured Light by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner (Starbound #3)
I like how every book in this trilogy focuses on a different pair of starcrossed lovers, but I have to admit that I don’t care much for this last couple. They meet when they both happen to break into the same secure facility at the same time, only to later discover they’ve been playing a cat-and-mouse game with their online identities as well. It’s too much coincidence, and the characters are so secretive from one another that I can’t buy their connection on any level beyond teenage hormones.
The story somewhat improves in its back half when the protagonists from the first two novels enter and team up with our new heroes, but their ensuing race to save all of humanity struggles to ground itself in any relatable personal stakes. When you add all that to the dull monologues that occur between every chapter and essentially just recap the events of the series to reveal that an alien intelligence has been guiding everything all along, it all ends up as a rather frustrating reading experience. This is definitely the weakest entry in the trilogy, and only worth reading if you’re truly committed to seeing how the overall plot resolves.
This book: ★★☆☆☆
Overall series: ★★★☆☆
Book ranking: 2 > 1 > 3
Movie #10 of 2018:
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
I missed this Marvel movie in theaters, in part because I didn’t see a whole lot of people talking about it. (And, honestly, because my fatigue over Spider-Man reboots had finally reached Batman levels.) As much as I liked Spidey in Captain America: Civil War and as happy as I am that the webslinger is finally in the Marvel Cinematic Universe continuity, I considered this movie as mostly a box to check off before seeing Avengers: Infinity War.
But the joke’s on me, because it turns out to be super delightful! I feel like nobody had told me how funny this movie is, but I was laughing the whole way through. It’s a gentler, less snarky sort of humor than the normal Iron Man / GotG sarcasm that the MCU often displays, and in full service to the characters. The plot is probably my favorite of any Spider-Man movie yet, and the seemingly effortless diversity in casting should be what more studios aim for.
★★★★☆
TV #30 of 2018:
The Mindy Project, season 6
I know I’ve been complaining about this show’s inconsistent characterization and plotting for its entire run, but this abbreviated final season somehow makes those issues even worse. Everyone feels two-dimensional, there’s no emotional core to any of the story developments, and Hulu’s budget has apparently required some rather egregious product placement all throughout. Even for a show that has never been my favorite, it’s downright painful to see it reduced to such a shell of itself.
This season: ★☆☆☆☆
Overall series: ★★☆☆☆
Season ranking: 3 > 2 > 5 > 4 > 1 > 6
Book #110 of 2018:
Star Wars: Lords of the Sith by Paul S. Kemp
Set five years after Revenge of the Sith in the new Disney canon, this Star Wars novel is a propulsive rush as the early rebel movement attempts to assassinate Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine and then pursues them across the hostile Twi’lek homeworld. Its status as a prequel deflates a little of the dramatic tension, since we know that the title characters are going to survive, but author Paul S. Kemp still manages to tell a gripping story that shows Vader at his most capable and deadly. It seems like there are some fun connections to the Clone Wars and Rebels TV shows here as well, although nothing that would confuse a reader like me who hasn’t seen those yet.
★★★★☆
Movie #9 of 2018:
Avatar (2009)
I haven’t seen this movie since its original theatrical run almost a decade ago, and in my memory it had been only a decent story mostly buoyed by its special effects – which I figured would surely seem dated at this point and less impressive on a TV than on a 3D film-screen anyway. I mostly put it on just because my wife and I are visiting Walt Disney World for our anniversary next month, and I wanted a refresher on the IP before exploring the new Pandora section at Animal Kingdom.
So perhaps my expectations were artificially low going into this rewatch of the film, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I ended up liking it. Yes, the plot copies heavily from stories like FernGully or Disney’s Pocahontas, and there’s some problematic Mighty Whitey and Noble Savage tropes going on, but the story, the characters, and the worldbuilding are all really well-developed. The beginning of the film especially has a very tight script that quickly establishes who these people are and explains all of the sci-fi issues necessary to dive into their world.
And the visuals hold up well too! In general I’m always going to care more about a character-driven storyline than how pretty it looks, but this movie really is so pretty and so alien. You can tell how much James Cameron labored over the whole project, and I only hope that the long time that’s now elapsed before the sequel(s) is due to that same level of care. I actually do want to see more films in this series now, which is not something I probably would have said yesterday.
★★★★☆
Book #109 of 2018:
Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue
I really like the immigrant family at the heart of this novel, whose experiences are drawn with a rich specificity from Cameroonian author Imbolo Mbue’s real life. As the title suggests, theirs is a typical American Dream narrative, and I hope it reaches those readers who may sometimes have a hard time seeing this country from an outside perspective. I would have liked more from the plot, however, and maybe a little less time spent with the rich white characters who treat their employees as therapists for all their gilded angst.
★★★☆☆
Book #108 of 2018:
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore
A welcome spotlight on the factory workers who suffered radiation poisoning in the early 20th century, before modern workplace safety regulations were in place and before the dangers of working with radium were widely known. Author Kate Moore has done a valuable service in publicizing these young women and the shameless corporate agents who tried to deny responsibility for their suffering. It’s aching to read the details of how the workers suffered and died, and of how long it took for the survivors to finally win the slim justice of payment for their medical bills and the institution of new safety protocols.
I often find it difficult to rate works of nonfiction, and I think this particular book would have benefited from a smaller cast of characters, as many of the individual stories are similar and it gets very hard to keep everyone’s name straight (especially on audio). Still, Moore has succeeded in bringing this forgotten history to light, and she makes it hard not to wonder which everyday practices today will at some point sound as horrifyingly reckless as licking a radiated paintbrush does now.
★★★★☆
Book #107 of 2018:
Night of Cake & Puppets by Laini Taylor
Laini Taylor is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers, thanks to the gorgeous emotional landscapes that her lyrical prose always ends up painting for me. In this short book, she uses that gift — and the help of actual illustrations from her husband Jim Di Bartolo — to revisit a side story from the first novel in her Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy, sharing the magical first date between two of its minor characters. Taylor brilliantly captures the excitement and wonder as Zuzana and Mik come together one night in the snow-swept streets of Prague, and although the character voice is more quirky and irreverent than what the author usually writes, it’s every bit as warm.
The whole book is pretty much an extended deleted scene, and it’s in no way essential to anything in the rest of the trilogy. It’s just one isolated moment between two new lovers, and it could probably even be read by someone who didn’t know the context of the larger story. But if you’ve read and loved the series already, this companion novella is definitely worth seeking out.
★★★★☆
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