I hope your Valentines day is going well!
A quick recap of recent stuff… I finished the new Stephen King book Duma Key. Great book. This is some of King’s best work, I think. I enjoyed everything about it. A limited set of strong characters that you really care about, a greatly story that really evolves, written in King’s trademark style. Even if you aren’t a King fan you should check this out.
The missus and I went to a sneak of The Signal last night. While I really enjoyed it, the missus didn’t enjoy it quite as much but she said it sort of grew on her some – but that is understandable, she isn’t really into horror. It is a film (sort of) in three parts about a “signal” (transmitted via tv, radio, phone, etc.) that drives people who see it or hear it “crazy”. The signal “reprograms” most people to be mistrusting / jealous / homicidial, but most people don’t know it is effecting them at all. It is definitely a low budget film, shot (I imagine) mostly using hand-held video cameras. I imagine there was a reasonable amount of improvisation going on, but I think they captured the essence of “going crazy” effectively. For a horror film, I thought it was refreshingly different from the main stream and I can easily imagine it will be popular with folks who enjoy horror films. I’ve seen it described as a cross between “The Ring” and “28 Days Later”, which seems appropriate to some degree. It reminded me in several ways of the movie Bug – The Signal should appeal to the same audience.
I am looking forward to the new John Grisham book The Appeal. It seems he has finally gotten back to the courtroom stories, which I always liked.
Last, but not least, a friend recently turned us onto Boston Legal which we absolutely love. We’re going back and starting at Season 1 (thanks Netflix!) while we simultaneously watch Season 4. This is a very funny, well written show. I’m not sure how we missed it all these years but I’ll chalk it up to “there’s only so many hours in the day and so many shows on TV”. If you are looking for a new show to try, either tune it in live or add it to your Netflix queue (or check your public library).