Articles tagged with: books
Jan/Feb 2010, Literature »
Janet Skeslien Charles
Moonlight In Odessa, the debut novel from Janet Skeslien Charles, is a warm and funny story of the bleak and deceptive world of mail-order brides. Its heroine and central figure is Daria, an intelligent, strong, and educated Odessan woman who finds a job working for a ‘matchmaking service,’ and ends up one of its clients, to her eventual sorrow. It’s a marvelous book, witty and subtle and affecting, and a page-turner on top of it. Published by Bloomsbury, Odessa has been reviewed positively by the New York Times, …
Cinema and Television, Cultural Comment, June 2009, Literature »
If you’re a frustrated genre novelist, aspiring fantasy screenwriter, or fanfic writer in the making — and really, who isn’t? — you’ve probably found yourself standing at a bewildering crossroads of dramatic options. Should you rip off Star Wars, or Batman? What does it truly mean to be human in an age where technology itself blurs the definitions of humanity? What are the limits of love in the face of our own cosmic mortality? Would The Matrix have been cooler with lasers? Fear not. The guideposts to your literary journey …
Cinema and Television, March 2009 »
Behind the small door in the wall, in the far corner of the Room Where No One Goes, is another world where children are not supposed to go. Venture where you like in this disappointing world, the sad, drab, gray house, where your friends are close to you as you sleep, waving motionless from the picture frame; visit your sad, deluded neighbors, whose lives have whisked right by; avoid the boy from over the hill, who talks too much, who talks to his charcoal cat, whose old grandmother lived in your house; venture where you like, anywhere but the world behind the small door where children are not supposed to go…
Cinema and Television, February 2009 »
While Inkheart leans heavily on the darker side running under the surface of good children’s literature, the mind-blowing dimensions of its premise are undercut by an extremely workmanlike aesthetic approach and plot holes that go unaddressed. The film itself subverts its ostensibly honest approach to common human themes like loss, breaking away from self-imposed emotional prisons, the complicated relationship between parents and children, and the nature of evil and suffering. Y’know. “Kid’s stuff.”
February 2009, Literature »
All you need to know about the book, you can pretty much surmise from the title. There’s this world, and it’s in the shape of a (wait for it) ring. A group of aliens discover the world and assemble four adventurers to explore it.
