Once

Posted by Dave Switzer under Reviews of movies

{4/5} “During the daytime people would want to hear songs that they know, just songs that they recognize. I play these songs at night or I wouldn’t make any money. People wouldn’t listen.” A man and a woman bond over music — he plays the guitar and she plays the piano, and they both sing. […]

Gold

Posted by Dave Switzer under Reviews of books

{4.5/5} “It seems to me, then, that the best one can do is to present one’s story as a struggle between sides which are both mixtures of good and evil (thus placing it somewhere between the extremes of utopia and dystopia), and don’t make the odds overwhelming in either direction. One can then proceed to […]

Sphere

Posted by Dave Switzer under Reviews of books

{4.5/5} “Wear these at all times, even though they’re just a precaution: the alarms trigger automatically if life-support conditions go below optimum. But that won’t happen… Every single major system is redundant. We can lose power, we can lose air, we can lose water entirely, and we will be fine for a hundred and thirty […]

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Posted by Dave Switzer under Reviews of movies

{4/5} “Some of you are non-vital.” Walter Mitty works at Life magazine in the negative asset department (as in, film negatives). Life is ceasing to print and going online. Walter has received a set of negatives from a brilliant photographer — one of them is supposed to be the cover for the final issue. But that one negative […]

It’s a Wonderful Life

Posted by Dave Switzer under Reviews of movies

{4.5/5} “No man is a failure who has friends.” George has big dreams of getting out of his small town, Bedford Falls. But each time he has a chance to leave, there’s a reason to stay. He gets married and has kids, and runs the savings and loan company that his father started. When his […]

The Postman

Posted by Dave Switzer under Reviews of books

{4.5/5} “All considered, it was amazing a man like him had lived this long. Everyone he had known or admired as a boy had died, along with all the hopes any of them had had. The soft world made for dreamers like himself broke apart when he was only eighteen. Long since then he’d come […]

RED 2

Posted by Dave Switzer under Reviews of movies

{4.5/5} “I was very touched that you cried at my funeral.” Marvin discovers that people want to kill him because of something he supposedly did in 1979 but he doesn’t know anything about — something called Nightshade. So he fakes his own death, and later recruits Frank and Sarah to help him out. How will […]

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Posted by Dave Switzer under Reviews of movies

{4/5} “It is our fight. It will not end here. With every victory, this evil will grow! If your father has his way, we will do nothing. We will hide within our walls, live our lives without light and let darkness descend. Are we not part of this world? Tell me, Mellon, when did we […]

Minority Report

Posted by Dave Switzer under Reviews of movies

{4.5/5} “Everybody runs.” John is chief in the precrime unit of the Washington DC police force. Due to the ability of three precogs to see murders in the future, the precrime unit has been able to eliminate all murders for the past six years — the murderers are caught beforehand. Precrime is set to go national […]

Burn Notice (season 2)

Posted by Dave Switzer under Reviews of TV shows

{5/5} “If we looked for everyone who tried to kill you, we’d do nothing else.” Michael’s new handler Carla demands that he do jobs for her once in a while — meanwhile, he tries to find out everything he can about her. Fiona decides to stop trying to be Michael’s girlfriend. And Sam’s girlfriend Veronica wants him […]