Thoughts on Living the Life Creative
Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962) - A drug addicted mother (Katherine Hepburn), an alcoholic, former stage matinee idol father (Ralph Richardson), the no account older son (Jason Robards) and the pampered baby of the family who has contracted tuberculosis (Dean Stockwell) slash at one another as their family begins its final descent into dysfunction.... Continue Reading →
The Pawnbroker (1964) - Sol Nazerman (Rod Steiger) is a Jew who survived the Holocaust and now runs a pawn shop in East Harlem. He carries with him the emotional scars of watching his children killed and his wife raped in the concentration camp. His solution is to seal off his emotions and reject any... Continue Reading →
Tropic Thunder (2008) - Through a set of bizarre circumstances a group of actors shooting a big budget Viet Nam war movie suddenly discover themselves in a real shooting war. They're over budget, behind schedule and their newbie director dies in an accident. The actors assume everything is more of the director's attemtp to create... Continue Reading →
Daughter of Elysium (1993) and The Children Star (1998) by Joan Slonczewski - Two novels from a common universe. Slonczewski is a microbiologist at Kenyon College and brings that hard science background to her work. These books make up two thirds of the "Elysium Cycle". The stories examine events on several planets when an intelligent... Continue Reading →
Fail Safe (2000) - Set at the height of the Cold War, a computer glitch launches American nuclear bombers toward the Soviet Union. Because they have passed the "fail safe" point (a precautionary stage designed to avoid these kinds of accidents) they can not be recalled. The President of the United States faces an unimaginable... Continue Reading →
Mythed Connections by Michael G. Munz (2013) - Three short stories that take the figures of Greek mythology and plant them firmly in the modern world. In "The Atheist and the Ferryman" a young man discovers there's an enormous river running through his basement. With a strange and grumpy old man in charge of bringing... Continue Reading →
Swing Time - (1936) Dancer and gambler Lucky Garnett (Fred Astaire) gets tricked out of marriage by his fellow performers. His father-in-law to be will let him try again if he can go to New York and raise $25,000. Once Lucky gets there he crosses paths with aspiring dancer Penny Carroll (Ginger Rogers). Dancing and... Continue Reading →
Fusion: A collection of short stories from Breakwater Harbor Books' authors (2013) - Breakwater Harbor Books is a group of self-published authors that have banded together for promotional and support purposes. This is just what it says, a collection of their short works. Sadly, the quality of that work varies widely from one end of the... Continue Reading →
Z (1969) - A political thriller following the assassination of a leading left wing politician an investigator tries to find the truth. The authorities insist that the death of Z (Yves Montand) was the result of an accident but the investigator (Jean Louis Tritignant) refuses to be distracted. He pursues the truth to the very... Continue Reading →
Dover Beach (The Last P.I. #1) by Richard Bowker (1987/2012) - A "limited" nuclear war has reduced the United States to a post-apocalyptic backwater nation. Society is still sorting itself out with both good and bad affect. In the midst of this Wally Sands is trying to be a private investigator. At the moment it... Continue Reading →
Stories Are My Life 