Buddha's Rhubarb Of Opinions On Media

My Glib List of the Best Movies that I saw in 2014 As usual, the last few years, the sheer volume of DVDs that I watched has fallen off. This year may be my steepest decline since I started U of M film studies in 1984. The up side of this is that almost all the movies I saw this year were at least pretty good, worth a watch. I don’t recall turning anything off part way in, but maybe that happened.  I definitely fell asleep in a few viewings, including two films on many folks best of lists.  There were a few very disappointing films, some so ridiculously bad, that they are in my own personal “so bad its good” category. Also, as is my wont with these lists, the categories are my own vague loose categories, and I include links to my own earlier in the year reviews, where there are also trailers for each flick. My current opinion of the films may be warmer or colder, depending on whether I have re-watched them, or just thought, discussed and worked out a better or ...

Glib Movie Reviews of Zombie movies on DVD I went to a Friends house for a birthday celebration afternoon of watching funny Zombie Movies.  Dead Snow & Dead Snow 2  - Directed By Tommy Wirkola Dead Snow, a film I had convinced myself I had seen, from having seen the trailer so often, and had customers assuming I had seen it, had gone over the story and it’s many gory, funny, gory & funny moments. But looking through my old reviews I realized I hadn’t actually watched it. I’m glad I realized it as I watched it yesterday, along with the sequel Dead Snow 2 Red Vs. Dead. Which is the Empire, or Evil Dead 2, perhaps more obviously of however many sequels of this series end up getting made. It really is. But the first one occupies slightly gruesomer, but just as darkly funny a space as that other great Norwegian Horror Comedy: Trollhunter. Dead Snow starts off with that cliched horror movie trope of the young students on school break (30 year old Med...

Glib Reviews Of Recent DVD Releases Coherence Directed By James Ward Byrkit   Coherence starts out as a typical old friends with the usual complicated personal histories getting together for a big dinner kind of movie. Then the lights go out, and the movie becomes quickly a suspenseful sci-fi alternate universe flick. It does so extremely well with a whip smart script and great acting from an ensemble of familiar actors mostly of the guest star, third banana variety according to imdb. But that shows you how much talent there is out there, as everyone in this is solid. One of the best ensemble pieces I have seen in a few years, is Coherence.  The biggest name actors in the piece are in chronological hipness, Elizabeth Gracen - Amanda from Highlander Raven ! (nerd swoon), Xander from Buffy The series (Nicholas Brendan ,) who plays an actor named Mike who says he was in Roswell for four years in one of the best meta moments of the movie. Also on board is Max (Maury...

The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss My rating: 5 of 5 stars Patrick Rothfuss' new book takes place in the world he created for his Kingkiller chronicles. Fans of which are almost as rabid in their hurry up and write the series as GRRM fans are with a song of fire and ice. This slim volume is a very different story that that of Kvothe, it's a story of peripheral character Kvothe recalls fondly, a sort of wild girl who lives under the magic university where much of the early part of the story Kvothe has told within the books thus far. The girl Auri appears from what she calls "the Underthing"... The bowels of the ancient school grounds, mostly abandoned. There are only hints in the series as to who she is, why she is there. In this book We continue to suspect, maybe even know that she was once a student, and that now she lives as the main moving part of the rundown forgotten tunnels, rooms below the school. The language and structure of the story are...