Well, the family is getting ready for a four-day weekend. Might be a rainy one, but we should be able to get Gabriel over to the pool one day and to Savannah on another.
New movies opening this weekend, the last of August:
Lawless From the writing-directing team behind 2006's striking Australian western The Proposition (director John Hillcoat, writer Nick Cave) comes this gangster tale about the real-life Bondurant brothers (Shia LaBeouf, Jason Clarke, and Tom Hardy), bootlegging brothers in Prohibition-era West Virginia. Jessica Chastain, Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce, and Mia Wasikowska co-star. The critics are split on this one; no one loves it, no one hates it.
Verdict: Not Interested
The Tall Man Jessica Biel stars in this horror story set in the Pacific northwest as a young widow who moves with her young son to a mining town. Turns out kids have gone missing in the area for a while now - their disappearances reportedly at the hands of a mysterious legend known as the "tall man." Supposed to contain lots of twists. Could be decent B-movie junk.
Verdict: Mildly Interested
The Possession Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick star in this supernatural horror film as a divorced couple whose young daughter purchase an old wooden box at a yard sale. Turns out the box contains a dybbuk, a spirit that seeks to devour its human host. Not good reviews, but could be some gross fun. A Jewish horror film! Roger Ebert loves it.
Verdict: Mildly Interested
The Good Doctor Orlando Bloom is said to give a compelling, creepy performance as a enthusiastic, ambitious young doctor out to impress his colleagues. He falls for an 18-year old patient suffering a kidney infection, then does everything in his power to tamper with her treatments, so that she will be forced to stay longer in the hospital. A dark, creepy black comedy getting good reviews, it co-stars Taraji P.Henson, Rob Morrow, J.K. Simmons, and Michael Pena.
Verdict: Mildly Interested
*
A little something different for the readers today. Let's take a quick glance at some of the upcoming Fall 2012 books that I think will be worth reading:
Breed, by Chase Novak (a.k.a. Scott Spencer - Endless Love, A Ship Made of Paper)
A wealthy New York couple undergoes horrific changes after they undergo fertility treatments and other, more dangerous, operations to have children. Stephen King calls it the best horror novel in decades.
Winter of the World by Ken Follett
Follett's second book in his century trilogy. 2010's Fall of Giants was pretty spectacular - melodramatic and absorbing, long and involving. I would expect more of the same here.
Live by Night by Dennis Lehane
Like he did in 2008's The Given Day, Lehane goes back in time again - this time we're in Prohibition-era Boston. This book moves from Tampa to Cuba and back up north as a the son of a Boston police captain takes a different path in life, rising through the ranks of organized crime.
There Was a Country by Chinua Achebe
Achebe's Things Fall Apart is required high school reading in a lot of schools and it's worth it - it's a great book. Here is his long-awaited memoir and might be essential reading for anyone interested in the bloody birth of Nigeria and the Biafran Civil War.
Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan
One of Britain's greatest writers gives the spy genre a try. A beautiful, book-loving Cambridge student, Serena, is recruited in 1972 by MI5 to infiltrate a literary circle and get close to an upcoming novelist. Sounds great.
Back to Blood by Tom Wolfe
Always interesting to see what Wolfe is up to. In this novel of our times, Wolfe takes on the city of Dexter and Lebron James... er, Miami. Racism, sex addiction, corrupt cops, psychiatry, immigrants, young billionaires, sex, modern art (the Basel Fair), regattas, Adult Only condos.
Dear Life by Alice Munro
Munro is arguably the best short story writer alive and is always worth reading.
The Absent One by Jussi Adler-Olsen
Hooray! The follow-up to the electrifying The Keeper of Lost Causes, this one has Carl Morck back working cold cases. He's intrigued by one: the murder of a brother and sister, in a which one of the suspects confessed and was convicted. Turns out that the case isn't dead.
Last to Die by Tess Gerritsen.
A Rizzoli and Isles mystery, always a good thing, about strange goings-on at Maine boarding school. Seems as if a predator might be tracking the students at the school one by one.
The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton.
I have to catch up on my Morton in preparation for this upcoming novel about an actress living in London who is still haunted by a crime she witnessed fifty years ago on her family's farm.
Also, there will be new novels by Michael Connelly, Zadie Smith, and Nelson Demille.
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