Thursday, June 30, 2005

June random reviews

DVDs:
  • Diary of a Mad Black Woman - hated it. With a passion. Read the review here.
  • Ellen: The Complete Season 2 - a pedestrian sitcom. Ellen DeGeneres deserves - and got - better. Read the review here.
  • The Flower of My Secret - not the best effort from Pedro Almodovar, but at least he's always interesting. Read the review here.
  • A Place Called Chiapas - a good introduction to "the world's first postmodern revolution." Read the review here.
  • Seventh Heaven: The Complete Second Season - I don't represent the target audience for this show. I represent the target audience of people most likely to hate this show. And yet, it's pretty much unhateable. Read the review here.
  • The West Wing: The Complete Fourth Season - the last season I can wax poetic about this once-great show. Read the review here. (And the even waxier third season review here.)
Books in brief:
  • The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. I reluctantly purchased the hardcover partly because I was the last person on the planet left who hadn't read it, but mostly because my book club chose it as our selection this month. My uncle had loaned me the first Robert Langdon book, Angels & Demons, months ago, and Da Vinci was a rehashing of that formula. Entertaining and interesting despite awkward writing, but difficult to take seriously and instantly forgettable.
  • Pack up the Moon by Richard Teleky. A beautifully written, thoughtful reflection on loss and friendship, with a mystery at the heart of it that isn't the point. Teleky thanks Sarah McLachlan in his preface, which made me predisposed to like the book but really has nothing to do with anything. But I prefer the heartbreaking W.H. Auden poem it gets its title from, memorably recited in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Not during one of the weddings.
"The opinions of most people are like the playthings of infants."
- Heraclitus