![]() ![]() Today we would call that kind of effort “world-building.” Masters, I think, would have simply called it life. ![]() It’s a real thrill to bring this town to life with the help of another 50 wonderful actors, and it’s mind-boggling to reflect that all these characters sprang from the pen of a single man. In this installment of Spoon River Anthology, we meet tragic figures, heroes and heroines, a few outright villains, the embittered, the regretful, the peaceful, the lost. Masters’s epic poem cycle is, of course, all about small details combining into a larger picture. Garrett Moyer.Actor 4/Tom Merritt/Fletcher McGee/Knowlt Hoheimer/Andy. As the we work our way through the full cycle - and as the poems and characters pile up - stepping back also enables us to see the emerging outlines of this fully imagined and wholly believable small town. Actor 1/Washington McNeely/Clarence Fawcett/George Gray/Fiddler Jones Pt. Releasing the poems in sets of 50 allows us to do just that. ![]() So it’s a real joy now and again to take a step back, share the most recent performances we’ve recorded, and reflect on the project’s progress to date. The logistics of Chatterbox’s Spoon River Anthology project are relatively complex, and while we’re busy getting all the performers auditioned, scheduled, recorded, and edited, it’s easy to lose track of the bigger picture. ![]()
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![]() Clowes offers another beautifully drawn slice of piercing social commentary. This attitude of solipsistic despair is expressed incisively and cleverly, taking Wilson through a search for his ex-wife, Pippi, who has become a prostitute since leaving him, and their daughter, put up for adoption years earlier. Magazine and asking, “Christ, do you realize how ridiculous you sound?” Clearly, the comment is directed as much at himself as to the I.T. ![]() ![]() The last panel shows Wilson looking at a Spirit The film stars Woody Harrelson, Laura Dern, Isabella Amara, Judy Greer, and Cheryl Hines. He’ll tell you you’re ugly he’s the kind of man who thinks he’s doling out. Wilson is a 2017 American comedy-drama film directed by Craig Johnson and written by Daniel Clowes, based on Clowes' graphic novel Wilson. stuff,” Wilson comes back at him with a mockingly satirical description of his own supposed work, using only initials. Wilson is a needy harasser, a misanthrope demanding affection who gets angry when it’s not instantly reciprocated. ![]() ![]() In one sketch titled “FL 1282,” Wilson asks the kid seated next to him on a plane about his line of work. Clowes uses a variety of drawing styles to depict Wilson and his world sometimes he's highly realistic, other times he's an Andy Capp–style cartoon, but he's always the same downbeat guy. ) takes his particular brand of misanthropic misery to new levels of brilliance in this book, a series of one-page gags that show the divorced and lonely main character repeatedly attempting to engage with life, and then falling back into his hell of pessimism. ![]() ![]() ![]() Speaking to Miss Saeki, he forgives his mother for abandoning him when he was young. While the "entrance" is open, Kafka travels deep into the forest, arriving in a village that exists in limbo. Toward the end of the novel, the two plotlines converge when Nakata comes to the library to burn the memories Miss Saeki has written down having done so for her, Miss Saeki dies at her desk. Nakata befriends a truck driver named Hoshino and fulfills his enigmatic destiny by locating and opening a white stone that acts as a portal between different worlds. ![]() ![]() As Kafka begins a sexual relationship with the fifty-year-old librarian Miss Saeki, he learns that his father has been murdered and believes that he may be responsible somehow. While Kafka seeks refuge in a private library in Takamatsu, meeting two women who he believes could be his mother and his sister, Nakata murders a metaphysical entity who takes on the shape of the Johnnie Walker whisky brand logo and who kills cats to collect their souls. ![]() Murakami alternates between chapters written from Kafka's first-person point of view and third-person chapters that follow the parallel story of Nakata, an elderly disabled man who gained the ability to speak with cats after falling into a coma as a child. Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore is a surrealist novel about Kafka Tamura, a fifteen-year-old boy who leaves home to escape an Oedipal curse that predicts he will murder his father and have sex with his mother and sister. ![]() ![]() ![]() Hidden Man was the third part of Jiang’s “Bullets” trilogy, which started with the action-packed Let the Bullets Fly and was followed by Gone With the Bullets. Now, Netflix is turning a fictional crime novel based on the murder, Midnight in Peking, into a full-blown series starring none other than Jiang Wen as the lead detective.Īt a time when Netflix is streaming more and more Chinese movies and TV shows, including sci-fi blockbuster Wandering Earth which was put up just last week, Midnight In Peking will be the streaming service’s first original series set in Mainland China - casting a Chinese actor-director as distinguished as Jiang Wen seems fitting for the occasion. ![]() ![]() The case, which actually happened at the time, was subsequently lost to the current of history, forever left unsolved. In the opening of Jiang Wen’s comedy action film Hidden Man, set in 1930s Beijing, police chief Zhu Qianlong tells surgeon Li Tianran of a disturbing case involving the murder of schoolgirl Pamela Warner, the British ambassador’s daughter. ![]() Hopefully that’s in the works though - we’d watch it. Netflix has now denied reports that it will turn Paul French‘s true crime novel Midnight in Peking into its first-ever China-set original series, or that it has tapped legendary Chinese actor-director Jiang Wen to star. Update: Seems someone jumped the gun and got us all excited without due cause. ![]() ![]() There’s just something about the way that Crouch can consistently build intensity that is just so damn impressive.Įthan is a great main character to follow. I would say it is definitely worth a read, even if you have watched the show. Because of that though, not a lot of this came as a surprise to me, however, this is a really clever story. I mean, as adaptations go, this one was actually pretty stellar. The whole time I was reading this, picturing Matt Dillon as Ethan Burke of course, I couldn’t help but be impressed with how the television show was handled. ![]() I actually did watch the first season of the television show, Wayward Pines, released in 2015 on FOX, so I had a very strong idea of what this story was all about. I was completely correct with that assumption. I loved both Dark Matter and Recursion from Crouch and suspected it would be more of the same with this series. ![]() When my dear friend, Shannon, suggested buddy reading this together, I was 100% on board. This is a significant backlist bump for me and luckily, quite successful. Pines, the first book in Blake Crouch’s Wayward Pines trilogy, was originally published in 2012. ![]() ![]() ![]() I’ve never really been a massive fan of DC or Batman, as a few people will know, but I loved Wonder Woman: Warbringer and I love Marie Lu’s writing so there was never any doubt this was going to make it on my to-read list. Sentenced to community service inside Arkham Asylum he spends his days mopping the halls surrounded by the most dangerous criminals Gotham City has, and it’s there he meets Madeline. When Bruce becomes caught up in the middle of a police chase he manages to stop the criminal escaping but he himself doesn’t escape punishment for disobeying the police. “Where do you inherit all this sarcasm from, Master Wayne?” “I highly recommend it.”Īlfred frowned at him. She’s a mystery Bruce has to unravel but can he trust her? The Nightwalkers target the rich, and Bruce’s name is next on their list.īruce cast his guardian a dry look through the rearview mirror. Among these, Bruce meets the intriguing Madeleine who has ties to the Nightwalker gang that is terrorizing Gotham City. Sentenced to community service in Gotham City’s Arkham Asylum, he encounters some of the city’s most dangerous and mentally disturbed criminals. Returning home from his lavish eighteenth birthday party, Bruce Wayne stops a criminal’s getaway-disobeying the police and crashing his car during the chase. ![]() ![]() The highly anticipated coming-of-age story for the world’s greatest super hero: Batman by the # 1 New York Times bestselling author Marie Lu. ![]() ![]() ![]() Wickedly proper architect Tristan needs a respectable woman to wed, but he's never stopped wanting bold, red-headed Carys. There's only one person who's never bought her act-the only man who makes her heart race: Tristan Montgomery, one of her family's greatest rivals. Outwardly confident and carefree, inside she's disillusioned with both men and love. For the past two seasons she's scandalized the ton with her outrageous outfits and brazen ways in a futile bid to deter potential suitors. Staying single is the only way to hide the secret that could ruin her-and her family-if it was revealed. But it's a thin line between love and hate in Kate Bateman's A Daring Pursuit.Ĭarys Davies is doing everything in her power to avoid marriage. The Davies and Montgomery families have been locked in an ancient feud. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() “I really can't say which of the American classics you should read. they're surely worth just as much as all those books.” I've loved maybe a handful of people in my entire life, compared with tens or maybe even hundreds of books (and here I'm counting only those books I've really loved, the kind that make you happy just to look at them, that make you smile regardless of what else is happening in your life, that you always turn back to like an old friend and can remember exactly where you first "met" them - I'm sure you know just what I'm talking about). If you went purely by numbers, then books would win hands down. I can't for the life of me explain why I have the bad sense to prefer people. I hope you don't lose all confidence in me now that I've admitted that. but still, however much I twist and turn the question, I've got to opt for people in the long run. I don't know whether people mean more than books - they're definitely not nicer or funnier or more comforting. ![]() ![]() ![]() It's a difficult choice, I've got to say. ![]() ![]() After furiously ordering his barber to leave, Guan ponders how Kuvira could betray her followers despite being on the cusp of victory, before ordering Sheng to continue her research. Guan initially assumes that Kuvira succeeded in her conquest, and becomes infuriated upon learning that she instead surrendered to Avatar Korra, and has ordered her armed forces to surrender immediately. Three months before the present day, Commander Guan, an officer in charge of an Earth Empire re-education camp in Gaoling, is being attended to by a barber when he is approached by Doctor Sheng, a scientist within the camp, with a report on the invasion of the United Republic of Nations. ![]() But when Korra, Asami, Mako, and Bolin don't all see eye-to-eye as to the solution, drastic measures will be taken to halt a new march to war! Synopsis Even as Kuvira stands trial for her crimes, vestiges of her imperial ambitions threaten to undermine the nation's democratic hopes. ![]() On the eve of its first elections, the Earth Kingdom finds its future endangered by its past. Korra must decide who to trust as the fate of the Earth Kingdom hangs in the balance! ![]() ![]() She easily assumed many roles, from the grieving widow to the captivating seductress. She could go from calculated control to rage in a moment’s breath. She is ruthless, driven and never satisfied. When we read headlines about serial killers, we often wonder if the family knew.īelle was complex. I thought it was clever to provide both sister’s perspectives. Nellie and her husband introduced her to perspective suitors. Nellie moved to America first, where she married and raised a family in Chicago. What a creepy tale this was! Told from the perspective of Norwegian sister’s Bella and Nellie. Serial killers both fascinate me and terrify me, so naturally I enjoy thrillers about them, especially fictional stories based on actual events. ![]() Narrated by Natalie Naudus and Stacey Glemboski Camilla Bruce delivered a twisted tale that kept me listening into the wee hours. In the Garden of Spiteis a fictional thriller based on the true crimes of Belle Gunness: The Black Widow of LaPorte, Indiana. ![]() |