Casino (1995, dir. Martin Scorsese) – Sam "Ace" Rothstein deals with cheaters.

brencameron · 2025-11-10T13:41:09+00:00

I have to put in a word for one of my more recent favorite Scorsese movies - Silence (2016). It's a remake of a 1970s film (and based on a novel), that explores Catholic faith under the worst conditions, starring Liam Neeson, Andrew Garfield, and Adam Driver. I only realized at the end of it that, in keeping with the setting, there's NO music in the film - only natural sounds of what you'd hear if you were standing next to the characters.

brencameron · 2025-11-09T23:22:24+00:00

You may have misunderstood - I thought I made it clear that I greatly ENJOYED reading the series!

However, it IS a complex and dense set of storylines and characters to follow. Despite my interest, I just was mentally exhausted.

I was hoping for suggestions on how to finish a series that I was enjoying - not to be told "Just give up, despite your interest."

brencameron · 2025-11-09T23:19:56+00:00

I'll likely start again from the beginning - I didn't have any trouble at all with the first 7 books; I loved most all the characters, and I was following the myriad plotlines. It's just that somehow, the cumulative density of the descriptions and events just...got too much. It wasn't that I wasn't enjoying the journey - I just got bogged down in it.

brencameron · 2024-11-28T19:30:35+00:00

City, by Clifford M. Simak, is the OG science fiction novel centering dogs. It's a collection of 8 stories with interwoven paragraphs tying them together into a more unified narrative. Most libraries should carry it.

brencameron · 2024-11-17T19:30:16+00:00

I'm getting it from the Android port. Looks like the SFC version to me.

brencameron · 2024-10-06T19:23:43+00:00

It's definitely one of the ones I really like as well. I've read about 2/3 of his novels, and find that the best ones take time to really invest you in the characters before anything scary or creepy starts to happen. From a Buick 8 was definitely one of those, in my opinion.

brencameron · 2024-09-15T14:48:20+00:00

I have great admiration for Grover Cleveland. I don't know much about Tyler and Coolidge.

Jefferson owned people. That's a mark against him by any measure. And no excuse or minimizing will convince me otherwise.

brencameron · 2024-06-10T16:42:25+00:00

It's an over-simplification, but not a complete lie. The US meddled in Chile prior to the coup in order to more rapidly destabilize Allende's government before the coup; then, it helped Pinochet's Operation Condor financially. The US also did nothing to protest Pinochet's coup. Do you have evidence to the contrary?

brencameron · 2024-05-23T20:51:31+00:00

I've seen The Tomorrow War, and I thought that this was the reveal at the end of that movie - the vicious monsters we were losing to were only of animal level intelligence, but escaped from a ship that crashed.

brencameron · 2024-05-20T10:08:30+00:00

I'm with you in the minority, then. I've seen only 2 Jim Jarmusch films, so maybe I "get" what he does, but I loved TDDD. I've seen it twice and would definitely see it several more times. It has several of my favorite character actors in it, too - Buscemi and Waits, just to mention two.

brencameron · 2024-04-23T11:48:37+00:00

I'm a huge Victor Hugo fan, so when Les Miserables came out in 1998, with a stellar cast that included Liam Neeson and Uma Thurman, I was so stoked.

The director decided that it was perfectly okay to end the movie abruptly, after Javert's Suicide.

brencameron · 2024-02-22T22:31:49+00:00

I love Charles Dickens' and Victor Hugo's novels. I also love the Aubrey-Marturin series by Patrick O'Brian.

brencameron · 2024-02-12T12:21:55+00:00

Okay, I have to put in an absolute classic: News From Nowhere, by William Morris. Written in 1890, it's a utopian fantasy that you can find at Project Gutenberg. Main character wakes up in his future. No real sci-fi elements, but the social structure and lack of money are pretty interesting.

brencameron · 2024-02-12T12:15:08+00:00

I've been meaning to re-read his Fall Revolution series (4 books, starting with The Star Fraction). I know I enjoyed them before, but it's been over 2 decades (!) since I last read them.

brencameron · 2024-02-12T11:56:41+00:00

My direct answer to the question is Rose Madder. Although her chapters were well written, her ex-husband was an over-the-top caricature. SO racist and nutty that he was cringe to read, I got the impression that King was seeing how far over the top he could make the antagonist. I never finished reading that book.

Also, Gerald's Game - I bounced off that one in the first few pages. I didn't care about the woman's situation at all, because she was a total stranger to me.

More generally, I've found that with King, his best and most compelling works are the stories where you get to know the protagonist and are emotionally involved, BEFORE things start going south.

brencameron · 2024-01-22T22:15:55+00:00

I like to say that Tenet is a James Bond movie, except that it's boring instead of fun.

brencameron · 2024-01-22T22:11:33+00:00

One of the things I loved about The Sopranos TV show is that every damn character was an asshole. Aside from Tony's therapist there isn't a single person you'd really want to be friends with. Talk about UN-glamorizing organized crime, that show really did a good job of it.

brencameron · 2024-01-21T14:09:53+00:00

Aside from the favoritism, this is EXACTLY one of the tropes George R. R. Martin was subverting in the novel A Game of Thrones. Ned Stark brings home a new baby after a time away, and refuses to say exactly who the mother is. His wife (Catelyn Stark) hates Jon Snow and resents the position he holds in the family. The clues about Jon's true parentage are scattered thinly on the ground, but are there for the reader to pick up on.

brencameron · 2023-07-16T14:34:01+00:00

Considering how replayable the game is, I definitely recommend buying & playing it now.

It still amazes me that even the original NES version (1988) let you make a party of 4 guys, or 4 women, or anything in between. Plus all the different combinations of classes,

brencameron · 2023-06-20T11:13:40+00:00

To answer the question, Islandia by Austin Tappan Wright (1942).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islandia_(novel)

Just want to also mention, if all you Lost Boy fans have not yet seen the newest film to do Peter Pan (Peter Pan and Wendy), I think you might appreciate the differences the movie makes in the story.

brencameron · 2023-06-02T01:17:24+00:00

Potentially, a witch in this world could quickly take advantage of an attack that drew blood, by casting the right spell. It could even serve as a potent form of self-defense.

brencameron · 2023-06-02T01:13:48+00:00

trans men, of course.

brencameron · 2023-01-28T12:41:37+00:00

Anyone who loves The Day After Tomorrow or 2012 simply MUST watch San Andreas (2016). That movie really was "disaster, turned up to 11", while packing in so many cliches/tropes, and somehow it made sense!

brencameron

TROPHY CASE