TV #21 of 2019: Black Mirror, season 5 I’ve always found the ubiquitous complaint that Black Mirror is a show about “what if phones, but too much” to be funny but facile, a reductive punchline for a series that interrogates human frailty through the lens of emerging technology as much as it critiques our devices …
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Book Review: The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman
Book #104 of 2019: The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman An elegant and immersive feat of first-century storytelling, culminating in the mytho-historic slaughter at Masada where Jewish resistance fighters reportedly killed themselves rather than falling to their Roman besiegers. That’s a difficult topic for any writer to approach, but Alice Hoffman paints it as a proper …
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TV Review: Bob’s Burgers, season 9
TV #20 of 2019: Bob’s Burgers, season 9 As expected for an animated sitcom this far into its run, Bob’s Burgers is still amusing but rarely delighting in this most recent season. The series has put in the character work for so many years that its humor can still go to some fantastically weird specifics, …
Movie Review: Deadwood: The Movie (2019)
Movie #6 of 2019: Deadwood: The Movie (2019) Thirteen years after HBO’s prestige western series was canceled without a proper resolution to its three seasons of hardscrabble civilization-building, it’s finally back on our screens once more. And it’s an absolute triumph, carrying all of the profane poetry, rich humor, and unexpected grace notes that fans …
Book Review: Dracul by Dacre Stoker and J.D. Barker
Book #103 of 2019: Dracul by Dacre Stoker and J.D. Barker Oddly enough, I think the main selling points of this novel are some of its weakest elements: namely that it’s a prequel to Dracula and that it features a fictionalized Bram Stoker facing off against the famous vampire. Co-written by Stoker’s great-great-nephew and based …
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Book Review: The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick by Mallory O’Meara
Book #102 of 2019: The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick by Mallory O’Meara An interesting biography of an early special-effects artist, including how her contributions were obscured by jealous male contemporaries and the difficulties author Mallory O’Meara has faced in trying to piece together her story …
Movie Review: Yes, It’s Really Us Singing: The Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Concert Special! (2019)
Movie #5 of 2019: Yes, It’s Really Us Singing: The Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Concert Special! (2019) A bit of a victory lap for the cast and crew of this musical comedy series at the end of their (fantastic) final season. The live special is fun and funny, but it’s also pretty lightweight and definitely just a …
TV Review: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, season 4
TV #19 of 2019: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, season 4 On the one hand, it’s a little frustrating that this is the second season of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend in a row to immediately walk back its lead-in cliffhanger. On the other hand, the batch of episodes that follows is probably the strongest since the first, and I really …
Book Review: The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
Book #101 of 2019: The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton [Note: I’ve used the original British title for this book, which was changed to ‘The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle’ for publication in America to avoid confusion with Taylor Jenkins Reid’s unrelated novel ‘The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.’ I prefer the …
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Book Review: Golden Fool by Robin Hobb
Book #100 of 2019: Golden Fool by Robin Hobb (The Tawny Man #2) This second Tawny Man novel is as slow-paced as the rest of author Robin Hobb’s wider Elderlings saga, but it benefits tremendously by situating its hero back at his old home of Buckkeep with a variety of interesting people to bounce off …
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