Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld novels and co-author, with Neil Gaiman, of Good Omens, was interviewed by NPR yesterday on science-fiction themes invading literary fiction. Also interviewed was Susanna Clarke, author of the wonderful Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
Freakanomics
is a gold mine of interesting facts and trivia, including how much money a crack dealer makes, the life cycle of popular baby names, how sumo wrestlers work the system and how the Chicago school system caught teachers cheating on standardized tests.
It’s not a lot more than that — the book is openly just an extended magazine article, and not a particularly critical one at that — but it’s a quick and interesting read; I knocked out most of it in a single transcontinental plane flight. And, honestly, when’s the last time there was a quick and interesting read about economics?
The book could use both more length and depth, but hopefully that will come in the form of a sequel.
Recommended for those looking for a fun and interesting quickie read. Not so recommended for those hoping this is a profound work that will somehow change their life.
Well, this is intriguing:
Company: Tribune Company
Location: US-CA-Glendale
Base Pay: N/A
Employee Type: Full-Time Employee
Industry: Broadcasting – Radio – TV
Manages Others: No
Job Type: Media – Journalism – Newspaper
Req’d Education: 4 Year Degree
Req’d Experience: Not Specified
Req’d Travel: Not Specified
Relocation Covered: No
DESCRIPTION
Purpose:
Reports on City Hall.
First off, is it a newspaper gig or a broadcast gig? And if it’s a newspaper gig, who covers City Hall from Glendale?
Also of interest: Jobs in sunny Florida, Hawaii and Texas.
Someone explain to me why Roseanne is getting its second season on DVD already, when there’s no plans at all for Ed to be released on DVD. Are there really people who miss the vintage comedy stylings of Roseanne Barr that badly?
And where the heck are my Max Headroom DVDs?
The Perfect Storm is a great example of Hollywood taking a true event that needs no embellishment or standard schmaltz to make it engaging, adding the embellishment or schmaltz anyway, and ending up with a weaker product for it.
The storm of 1991 grabbed the attention of the nation for a reason. I watched all the reports of the storm from hundreds of miles away, spellbound and horrified.
This film, which purports to put us in the center of the storm, fails to do the same. The problem is that we’ve been lulled into “it’s a typical Hollywood movie” coma by the ridiculous speeches put into the mouths of all the actors, particularly George Clooney, who is forced to act as though being the captain of a small commercial fishing vessel isn’t work, but a higher calling akin to being a priest or a brain surgeon or a kindergarten teacher. Every character gets their moment in the sun so that we’ll feel their loss when it happens, and as a result, the movie takes FOREVER before we get anywhere.
Ironically, the storm is somewhat skimped on: There’s a brief scene which utterly fails to explain what the storm is, how it occurred and why it’s noteworthy. Instead, we get every possible disaster at sea aboard the Andrea Gail first. Of course, since no one from the ship participated in the filming of this movie — for obvious reasons — the fact that the whole sequence has been made up out of whole cloth makes it even less engaging.
And for all the talk of how much money was involved in creating the special effects, it all looks remarkably like a Hollywood invention, not a real ship at sea — unless ships at sea are now lit like Hollywood sound stages.
The poor actors trapped in this film do excellent work with the too-standard material, and make the film more watchable than it ought to be. But ultimately, I found myself wanting to watch Jaws again, or re-read The Old Man and the Sea, the two stories the filmmakers desperately aped and swiped from, coming up with a product that measures up to neither.
This is a renter.
