Tag / Syfy

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Book 5 (of 52) – Joyland

Joyland - Stephen King

Joyland – Stephen King

Joyland, Stephen King’s second novel for the Hard Case Crime imprint, tells the tale of a young college student who takes a summer job at an amusement park in North Carolina, stumbling upon a murder mystery and a haunted ride in the process.  Mostly, though, this is a coming of age story, as the protagonist, Devin Jones, gets over his first heartbreak, finds a place where he truly fits in, at least for a while, and manages to solve the crime of who murdered the girl who haunts the Horror House.

The crime elements, along with the supernatural, take a back seat in this tale, which I gather is not quite the intent of the line.  But when a name like Stephen King offers to write a book for you, I guess you don’t let silly quibbles like that stand in the way.  I enjoyed this side of King’s work and might look to pick up his first novel for this line, the inspiration for the Syfy series Haven.

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Midseason Review – Fridays

old-tv-set1It’s time to wrap up our look back at my thoughts on the new fall season’s slate of Friday shows.

8:00

Hawaii Five-0 – The show is a huge hit overseas for CBS, so it gets relegated to Fridays where it won’t cause much damage here at home.

Maternity leave has kept Grace Park’s Kono separated from the rest of the team for most of the season, but she was recently reunited with the rest of the Five-0 team.

9:00

Blue Bloods – Year 4 of CBS’s dependable, if not spectacular, police procedural.

Honestly, I don’t know if I would bother watching this show if it aired any other night.

Closing out the week with the new shows debuting this winter:

Enlisted – The new comedy features three brothers who wind up in the same platoon in the army.  Early returns have been good.

Helix – Syfy’s latest series features an outbreak in a remote base and the CDC researchers sent to investigate.

by jim

Midseason Review – Mondays

Day 2 of our look back at my thoughts on the new fall television season and what is new for the winter and spring.

7:00

How I Met Your Mother – Entering its 8th, and last, season, this is a show in desperate need of a change.  I’ve never been one of those people who felt that the show needed to introduce the title mother in order to make the show worth while, it has started to feel that the writers and producers are treading water while waiting to bring the mother on board.  That could give the show enough juice to energize not just this season, but any possible future ones as well.

As it turns out, this is not the final season for HIMYM.  Which means they will likely continue to tread water for another year.

Bones – Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz returned last week for the 8th season with a move to Mondays, taking over the House timeslot.

At this point, Bones is, to paraphrase Dennis Green, the show we thought it was.

8:00

2 Broke Girls – In some ways, this was one of the more disappointing series to debut last season.  Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs are both talented actresses who could use better material.  Hopefully the writers and producers spent the summer focusing on what worked last year and got rid of the base racial stereotypes that tended to drag things down.

The second season has improved somewhat, but the show still tends to go for the lowbrow laughs at every opportunity.

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by jim

2010 Review – Movies

A likely part of the reason I only made it through 8 books last year was the 119 movies I saw, making it the 5th most prolific year of my life.

Amy Adams, Mila Kunis, and Nicolas Cage each starred in 4 films I saw, tying for the yearly lead.  Bruce Willis starred in 2, giving him the all time lead with 27.

For fun, here’s a quick review of the films and what recollection, if any, I have of them.  They are listed in the order I saw them.

District 9 (2009)

Aliens invade South Africa.  One of the surpise hits of ’09.

Extract (2009)

Mila Kunis works with Jason Bateman at a spice factory.

Moving McAllister (2007)

Mila Kunis is some muckety-mucks daughter and some dude helps her move to get in good with the dad.

Welcome (2007)

Streak (2008)

Spleenectomy, The (2008)

Three shorts I downloaded from iTunes.  Anna Faris pretended to be a doctor in the last one.

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