Daemon by Daniel Suarez

READ THIS BOOK!!! It is a techno-thrill ride that you just can't get off ... even if you wanted to!

“Daemon is to novels what The Matrix was to movies. It will be how other novels that rely on technology will be judged.”
— Rick Klau, Strategic Partner Development - Google

“Greatest. Techno-thriller. Period. Experts have long feared the Internet doomsday scenario. Daemon is arguably more terrifying.”
— Billy O'Brien, Director of Cybersecurity and Communications Policy at the White House

“Daemon is wet-yourself scary, tech-savvy, mind-blowing!” —Paste Magazine

Daemon's sequel, Freedom^TM, is coming in 2010.

Goal II: Living the Dream

Jacket: "Newcastle United's favorite player, Santiago Munez, reaches superstardom and every footballer's dream when he's transferred to Real Madrid to play in the UEFA Eurpoean Champions League alongside David Beckham, Zinedine Zidane, Raul, Guti and Iker Casillas. AS Santiago basks in the glory, acclaim and money, he discovers the ugly face of success - one that threatens to destroy everything he's worked for and everyone he loves."

Fun, brain candy and hot players. Enough said. Can't believe there'll be a third installment though.

Let the Right One In

Wikipedia: "Let the Right One In (Swedish: Låt den rätte komma in), also known as Let Me In, is a 2004 vampire fiction novel by Swedish writer John Ajvide Lindqvist. The story centers on the relationship between a 13-year-old boy, Oskar, and a 200-year-old vampire child, Eli. It takes place in Blackeberg, a working class suburb of Stockholm, in the early '80s. The book focuses on the darker side of humanity, dealing with issues such as bullying, drugs, theft, pedophilia, prostitution and murder as well as the obvious supernatural themes.

Oskar is a 13-year-old-boy who is being bullied at school. He befriends a mysterious child, Eli, who moves in next door with an older man, Håkan. Eli is revealed to be a vampire, but the two children develop a close relationship and Eli helps Oskar fight back against his tormentors."

This was such a great story and a fresh angle on the vampire theme.

Twilight on DVD

Why oh why did they do this? Maybe less money should have been spent on the hype and more on the screenplay and acting! Enough with the longing stares and pregnant pauses!

SPOT ON QUOTE: " USA Today gave the film two out of four stars and Claudia Puig wrote, "Meyer is said to have been involved in the production of Twilight, but her novel was substantially more absorbing than the unintentionally funny and quickly forgettable film".

The Children of Huang Shi

JACKET: "Experience the true story of British journalist George A. Hogg (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), who snuck across enemy lines in 1937, to expose the Japanese occupation of China. After capture and injury, a Chinese resistance leader, Chen (Chow Yun Fat), had to rescue and send him to hide in a remote orphanage. Now in this foreign land of lost children, far away from the front lines, he's found more stories than he could have ever dreamed. From his true love of an Australian nurse, to his timeless friendships with Chen and the orphans, Hogg discovers a rare courage and the true pleasures of life ub the unlikely sanctum of Huang Shi."

Break out the tissues! This film shows you that one person CAN make a difference.

Blindness

Jacket: "... this unflinching story begins when a plague of blindness strikes and threatens all humanity. One woman (Julianne Moore) feigns an illness to share an uncertain fate in quarantine, where society is breaking down as fat as their crumbling surroundings. Based on the Nobel Prize-winning Jose Saramago's novel - let Blindness lead you on a journey where the only thing more terrifying than being blind is being the only one who can see."

This is heavy.

Cadillac Records

JACKET: "Cadillac Records chronicles the rise of Leonard Chess' (Adrien Brody) Chess Records abd its recording artists including Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Chuck Berry, Willie Dixon and the great Etta James (Beyonce Knowles). In this tale of sex, violence, race and rock and roll in Chicago of the 1950s and '60s, the film follows the exciting but turbulent lives of some of America's greatest musical legends."

The film has a tendency to drag and only takes a snapshot of each artist.

Transporter 3

Yahoo! Movies: "Frank Martin has been pressured into transporting Valentina, the kidnapped daughter of Leonid Vasilev, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency for the Ukraine, from Marseilles through Stuttgart and Budapest until he ends up in Odessa on the Black Sea. Along the way, with the help of Inspector Tarconi, Frank has to contend with the people who strong armed him to take the job, agents sent by Vasilev to intercept him, and the general non-cooperation of his passenger. Despite Valentina's cynical disposition and his resistance to get involved, Frank and Valentina fall for each other, while escaping from one life-threatening situation after another."


This was mindless and horrendous.

Knowing

Synopsis: "A teacher (Cage) opens a time capsule that has been dug up at his son's elementary school; in it are some chilling predictions -- some that have already occurred and others that are about to -- that lead him to believe his family plays a role in the events that are about to unfold."

The trailer does not do this movie justice. I only went for the free screening and was pleasantly surprised that it isn't your typical apocalyptic film. DO NOT TAKE CHILDREN UNDER 13 YEARS OLD. There are two disaster scenes that are pretty graphic and brutal. I thought I had it figured out in the beginning, but it kept changing. This is one to watch on the big screen. Roger Ebert was sitting two rows behind us so I'll have to read his review this week.

Rachel Getting Married

Jacket: "When Kym (Anne Hathaway), returns to the Buchman family home for the wedding of her sister Rachel, she brings a long history of personal crises, family conflict and tragedy along with her. The wedding couple's abundant party of friends and relations have gathered for a joyful weekend of feasing, music and love, but Kym - with her biting one-liners and flair for bombshell drama - is a catalyst for long-simmering tensions in the family dynamic."

This is one family in dire need of group therapy

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Lines may divide us, but hope will unite us.

Jacket: "Based on the best-selling novel by John Boyne, it's "an unforgettable motion picture experience. Powerful and moving beyond words" (Pete Hammond, Hollywood.com). Bored and restless in his new home, Bruno an innocent and naive eight-year-old, ignores his mother and sets off on an adventure in the woods. Soon he meets a young boy, and a surprising friendship develops. Set during World War II, this remarkable and inspiring story about the power of the human spirit will capture your heart and engage your mind."

Be prepared to gasp at the sudden and stark ending!

Role Models

Jacket: "As the world's least-likely mentors, Danny (Paul Rudd) & Wheeler (Sean William Scott) must put aside their selfish, sarcastic and party-driven ways in order to give two odd, foul-mouthed kids invaluable wisdom about life, love and heavy metal."

Oh, you will laugh! There's always a market for characters stuck in stunted adolescence. Gotta love Ronnie.

Ashes of Time Redux

Wikipedia: "In this film, set in ancient times in China, Leslie Cheung plays an agent, Ouyang Feng, hiring famous bounty-hunters. His character is portrayed as a fallen swordsman driven by greed and heartless to both friend and foe. He was perpetually being spiteful of love as his own love history was not nearly so beautiful. His bounty-hunters came and went as was narrated by Ouyang Feng himself as based on the Tung Shu predictions.

In essence, he was a loner with little love, but the bounty hunters that worked for Ouyang Feng, like 'Blind Swordsman' (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) and another of his best fighters, Hung Chi (Jacky Cheung), discovered the intangible secret of true love while Ouyang retained his attitude towards his fighters and the precious lessons that they have taught. However, the thread that runs through the entire narrative has clearly the spirit of refusal in the sense that one should reject another before he gets to be rejected in the future. To illustrate, nearly every character in this story has resorted to being selfish and malignant in order to prevent being rejected by others, be it in love or in comradeship as their individual hardships have moulded their attitude turning them into heartless and cold individuals in order to survive in the uncompromising desert where the story is set.

It has many moral implications but is less evident since the main character is Ouyang himself and most of the narration would unquestionably be centered on him."

Henry Poole is Here

IMDb: "Henry Poole abandons his fiancée and family business to spend what he believes are his remaining days alone. The discovery of a "miracle" by a nosy neighbor ruptures his solitude and restores his faith in life."

This is hokey, but not preachy.

A Powerful Noise

A documentary film about women changing the world.
Their stories will inspire you to join them

A Powerful Noise takes you inside the lives of three women - in Mali, Vietnam and Bosnia - as they overcome seemingly insurmountable odds to create lasting change in their communities.

In the Electric Mist

NYT: "A detective tracking a serial killer who preys on young women finds his investigation complicated by a glamorous Hollywood starlet and a ruthless crime kingpin in director Bertrand Tavernier's adaptation of the James Lee Burke novel In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead. Jerzy Kromolowski, Mary Olson-Kromolowski, and Tommy Lee Jones collaborate on the screenplay for the film, which stars Jones, John Goodman, Peter Sarsgaard, Ned Beatty, and Tom Sizemore. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide"

I was really hoping for more out of this one, but it fell way short.

Australia

Jacket: "Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman join forces with visionary director Baz Luhrmann ... [in this] epic and romantic action adventure set on the brink of World War II. When an English aristocrat (Nicole Kidman) travels to this faraway continet, she meets rough-hewn cattle driver (Jackman) and an enchanting Aboriginal child (Brandon Walters). This unlikely trio joins forces and embarks on a transforming journey, driving a herd of cattle across hundreds of miles of the world's most beautiful, yet unforgiving, terrain. When their world is torn apart by powerful enemies, they must try to find each other amidst the bombing of the city of Darwin by the Japanese forces that attacked Pearl Harbor."

The child lead, Brandon Walters, steals every scene he is in. You can't help but be enamored by the big brown eyes and that winning smile. Overall, this reminded me of films my mom would watch when we were kids. We'd be curious and snuggle up on the couch and get sucked in the film. So I don't get what all the bad hype is about. This film has heart and we see very little of that these days.

I Served the King of England

Yahoo! Movies: "Jan Dite is short in height, but high in ambition. To put it bluntly, the young provincial waiter wants to become a millionaire. And he knows just how to do it: by hearing everything, seeing everything, and creating opportunities at every turn. Armed with this knowledge and an irrepressible wish to please, he soon leaves his first place of employment, a pub, for a luxury brothel and finally moves onto an elegant Art Nouveau Prague restaurant. But by the late 1930s, things are changing: Hitler has taken the Sudetenland region and is breaking apart Czechoslovakia. Jan falls in love with Líza, a Sudeten German proud of her Aryan blood. They marry, and soon after Líza is sent to serve on the Polish front, while Jan remains behind to serve as a nurse in a Nazi SS Research Hospital, but when she returns, she has a fortune in rare stamps that Jews had 'left behind.' After Lízaâ's less than heroic death, Jan sells the stamps and becomes a millionaire. But he only has three years to enjoy his fortune: the new Communist regime puts him behind bars for 15 years, one for each of his millions. Upon his release from jail, Jan is sent to live in a decrepit border town. Here Jan reflects on the events that have shaped his life--and to reflect on what might have happened if he had played a different role in these events."

sexdrive

Wikipedia: "Ian Lafferty (Josh Zuckerman) is an 18-year-old recent high school graduate. He searches for a girl online making it look as if he's buff and suave, although he's sweet and unassuming. He soon meets "Ms. Tasty" (Katrina Bowden) and agrees to meet her in person. She lives in Knoxville, while he lives in Brookfield. With his best friends Lance (Clark Duke) and Felicia (Amanda Crew), they go in a Pontiac GTO Judge borrowed without permission from Ian's arrogant homophobic older brother Rex (James Marsden)."


This could rank in the top 10 worst films of 2008!