3 posts tagged “review”
People that know me know that I love gin.
We had a rocky start, gin and I. It's got a unique flavor that can be kind of off putting at first.
Annie describes it as "pine flavored rubbing alcohol".
My love affair with gin started around last Thanksgiving. We had a grand time; gin and I. Ever since it's been a whirlwind romance.
My love affair with fruit started back when I was a kid. I love fruit. I'd eat fruit over many a sweet, sugary treat almost any time.
So when I saw a bottle of "pear infused" gin at the store I couldn't help but try it.
Now then. I find most booze palatable. I don't like beer, too bitter. Wine is blah, also bitter.
Tastes like sour grape juice.
But this stuff...this Wet by Beefeater....
I tried it out in my standard martini recipe:
2.5 oz gin
1/4 oz vermouth
stirred
strained
garnished with a lemon peel
I use this recipe for all gins, great and small. Bombay right down to the grocery store brand.
Wet by Beefeater though...
Blech.
Is this even gin?
It's terrible.
Where is the distinctive gin flavor?
Nowhere to be found.
It's tastes vaguely antiseptic.
I'm glad this bottle was on sale for less than $10 because I would have bought it for regular cost (gin+fruit should = yummy).
I'm going to go ahead and place this in the back of my cabinet; right next to that bottle of white chocolate liqueur that tastes like chalk that somebody gave me for Christmas.
It took almost too me as long to come up with the stupid title for this post than it did for me to write the whole post....
In writing this I learned that I don't know how to write about books. I can write about movies with little to no problem...but books...eh.
Anyway...
Before this week I've only viewed the world of James Bond through the
cinema. I've seen all the movies, and I'm going to be honest here,
don't really care for any of them.* They are a fun confection but once
they are gone they are gone. I don't remember most of the villains or
the girls or the ridiculous plots or gadgets or any of that junk.
It goes right out the window.
This week I listened to the most recent in a long line of novels about James Bond, Devil May Care.
It
seems that while there have been a couple dozen other Bond books since
his death, this is the first new Bond novel to carry the Ian Flemming
name and was announed on what would have been Flemmings 100th birthday.
When Devil May Care came out in May I heard a brief review and interview with the author on NPR and it caught my interest so I added it to my reading list.
I had no idea what to expect and was delighted with what I got.
The book begins with an older, beaten down Bond. He is on a forced
sabbatical after (I'm guessing) having been married in the last book
and having his wife killed and somehow being brainwashed by an
enemy(?). It was unclear, to me at least. Either way, he was in no good
place. There is a passage that describes him looking in a mirror,
detailing all the scars from all the battles past. That passage let me
know that this was a Bond based at least in some form of reality, an
alternate one certainly but maybe one just down the street and to the
left. Unlike the movies which to me feel like they take place in a
galaxy far, far away where nobody ever really gets hurt and Bond's hair
is never mussed and his shirt is always pressed.
Going in I was surprised to learn a couple of things.
Literarily, Bond is is still in the 1960's. I like that quite a bit.
One
of the things that makes me dislike the movies so much is that they,
until recently were still using ridiclous Cold-War style plots and
villains in the modern day. (Wasn't the plot in one of the recent
movies that the villian was going to shoot a big laser from space and
hold the world hostage? I'm sorry, but that just doesn't work for me.
If it were 1966 and we were all still afraid of the Russians and the
arms race and all that, maybe, but not in the 1990's.)
Bond does not like gadgets. At least in this incarnation. They get in the way. His gun, his hands and his commando knife will do him fine, thank you.
Villains of old, from the movies, exist in the books. There is talk of Bofeld and Gold Finger. I don't know why but I it made me giggle when every they were brought up.
The villain in this book was totally ridiculous; he plans to destroy England because when he studying was at Oxford a student made fun of his deformity, which is having a money's paw instead of a left hand. That being said, he's totally fun! I love the idea of a supervillian when done right. There was even an evil sidekick, complete with funny hat; just like Odd Job!
Of course there's a girl, two actually, the somewhat tellingly named Scarlett Papava and her twin sister Poppy.
We get to visit all kinds of international locales circa the late 1960's; Paris, London, Rome, Tehran, St. Petersburg...
Overall it was a fun book. If I had to compare it to the movies I would rank it up there with the early Sean Connery ones and far, far away from Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan.
*There is
always an exception and I have to say that for me the remake of Casino
Royale is it. I think it's because I like Daniel Craig as an actor; and
he looks a bit like my father which might have some sort of subliminal
influence on me.
"The King of Kong" is a triumph of the human spirit. A real life retelling of the classic underdog story; David vs. Goliath, Rocky vs. Apollo Creed, 300 Spartans vs. Persian hordes.
Steve Wiebe is a lovable loser, a man who can't seem to catch a break no matter what he does or how hard he tries. One day while unemployed he makes a life changing decision: to beat the Donkey Kong high score world record. Meanwhile the reigning champion, Billy Mitchell, lounges like a king on his throne, unworried about his title, seemingly unmindful of his possible doom.
Mitchell, who set the record in 1981, behaves as if he were giant among men; not concerning himself with what he considers to be minor irritants like flies or Steve Wiebe. There is something about Mitchell that gives you pause, something in his eyes that is reminiscent of Al Bundy. A man past his prime but still reliving glory days, bragging to his friends about four touchdowns in a single game, or in Mitchell’s case a 900,000+ score in Donkey Kong.
In stark contrast to his opponent, Wiebe spends hours on end playing Donkey Kong in his Seattle garage; facing not only the barrel throwing monkey but his own son demanding that he “wipe his butt” for him while he is in the middle of a game on track to break the world record. All of this is of course caught on tape to hilarious effect.
Soon the scene is set for a showdown, Wiebe vs. Mitchell in a live arcade duel. Will David beat Goliath?
"King of Kong" is a movie full of colorful characters, so much so I had to keep asking myself if these people and this whole movie were real. There are moments where the dramatic tension is so high you can't help but wonder if these events are orchestrated. But they're not; everything in this movie is the real deal. No matter how crazy some of these people seem they are very real, every situation no matter how ridiculous it seems is real.
This is a great movie, full of comedy, drama, tenderness and even action, albeit video game action. “King of Kong” goes beyond being a movie about just a video game and is a story about real people and their lives above all else.
Despite it's PG-13 rating (which was for one swear word), "King of Kong" is a movie for all ages and demographics. I can’t recommend it enough.
