Vacation by Jeremy C. Shipp
I have this bad habit of only reading when I'm on business trips. I'm so far behind on watching movies and TV shows from a combination of a sheltered upbringing and being too busy with creative stuff that I don't have as much time for reading anymore. I end up reading a book about once a month on average.
I started reading
Vacation back in January and didn't get to finish it then and was confused as all get out when I came back to it on this most recent trip. I'm pretty sure that I would have been confused anyway because there was a bunch of stuff I didn't understand properly when I was reading it through the first time.
Vacation made sense, but the beginning was still kinda "whut?!" so I re-read the beginning and was fine.
This book is subtle and brazen all at once. The plot is subtle, the prose is brazen. It's a great example of how bizarro fiction can work in novel length. If it wasn't bizarro, it would probably be classed as near-future dystopian science fantasy.
It's undeniably weird, so I think you all will like it in that respect. On a political scale, it's all over, but seems mostly anti-corporation and anti-west so that might piss some off.
If you've never read bizarro, I'd recommend reading some short stories before plunking down change for a novel. Jeremy's short stories
Ballerina and
Dog are great introductions to the genre. Dog, however, is way darker than
Vacation and is too dark for work, so to speak.
Dreamrock's score:
95/100
Guess for everyone else:
70-75/100
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Kick-Ass
Awkward and puerile. Hilarious and a lot of fun. I suspect a lot of DCasters would agree with Bo's assessment of the movie. My resident comic book super hero fan mostly hated it. I liked it and the roommate who disagrees with me on everything also liked it. So, there's an odd niche of people who are going to love this one.
Nick Cage has been on my naughty list for awhile, and this movie has inked him in there permanently. I hated his character and I hated the way Nick played him. I hate his socks now.
His socks. That said, he had a few good lines in there.
His character was a lame-ass Batman with guns.
Kick-Ass, the character, was pretty lame too. He's an everyman and he does a brilliant job of showing why normal people can't be superheroes. He's basically Peter Parker with less crying and no superpowers. The less crying is substantially important to my appreciation of his character.
Hit Girl was clearly the star of the movie and all three members of my panel thought she was the best part of the movie.
The member of my panel who hated the movie complained about it moving too slowly in the parts where I thought it was at its awesome best. Ignoring the fighting parts.
If you're a fellow pacifist, you're going to have to pretend violence is ok for the length of the movie. I'm used to doing that already but I know some of y'all don't get past that well so fair warning on that bit.
Dreamrock's score:
76/100
Guess for everyone else:
40/100 (Yeah, I'm going with Bo's score, just converted to my scoring system)
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Penelope
In case you're trying to look this one up, it's the movie with Christina Ricci and James McAvoy. My impression is that no one ever heard of this movie. Ever. I'm clearly behind on pop-culture so I might be wrong.
This is my idea of a Drabblecaster's love story. Except it doesn't end with tentacles. I was destined to love this movie though as it combines two of my favorite actors, the aforementioned Ricci and McAvoy so please grain-of-salt this one. I saw it on Netflix streaming. If it's still there and you have it, that's an excellent way to check this out just in case you don't love it as much as I did.
While it has a somewhat cliche ending, the ultimate message isn't the cliche "If you love yourself you'll stop being weird and other people will love you too" message. I don't know. Watch this movie for free if you can and then complain about lost time if you don't love it.
Probably great as a date movie in either case though.
Dreamrock's score:
like a bazillion
Guess for everyone else:
???