"Under the Dome" Review

This was the second time I sat down to read "Under the Dome". I first picked it up around Christmas the year it came out (2009), but for some reason was either not impressed or got bored with it, and I put the book down

So, the book sat on my shelf, waiting patiently for me to pick it up and start again.
I had brought “Under the Dome” along with three other books home with me when I visited my parents at Christmas, and left it for the last book to read. This time, I don't know if I was in a different place, or the story just struck me, or something, but I devoured this book. From the first page, I was sucked in, just like I had been with the classic Stephen King stories that I read during my sophomore to senior years in high school.
“Under the Dome” is not your typical Stephen King horror book; in fact, there was not any elements of horror in the book that I could recall.
As I said, I devoured this book this time around, deciding to give up sleep or food in favor of reading, knocking out chunks of sixty to seventy five pages at a sitting.
The story is simple: what happens to a town when it is cut off from the world by a dome, and how do you get rid of it. It starred a former Army person turned fry cook, Dale Barbara, as the protagonist, and the city’s Second Selectman, Jim Rennie, as they faced off against each other several times during the course of the book.
Mr. King has always been one of my favorite authors, and he did not disappoint with this novel. His ability to build a world that draws you in from the first page and makes you lose track of everything else as you read is something that other authors could learn a lesson from.
This is definitely a book that keeps you guessing for the first two thirds and then once you find out the who behind the dome, you spend the rest of the book wondering how it would be resolved.
My only beef with the book is one that I have with most Stephen King books, and that is the profanity. You could go for several pages without seeing a swear, and then the very next page would be littered with them. But, given that Mr. King has been writing a lot longer than I have, I guess I have no room for criticism, and pushing it to the side as a part of his style.
I could definitely see this book being made into a SyFy miniseries and I would sit down and enjoy every minute of it. My only worry would be that whoever made the movie or miniseries would dwell too much on Jim Rennie and not on the actual story that Stephen King intended.

Overall Rating: 3.5

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As always, be kind, please rewind, and remember two wrongs may not make a right, but three rights always make a left.

review of Extraordinary Measures

A couple of weeks ago, I had the "pleasure" of seeing Extraordinary Measures. You will understand in a little while why I used the quotation marks around the word pleasure.
I had actually been looking forward to seeing this movie because of the trailers that I had seen. I am a HUGE Harrison Ford fan and a pretty big Brendan Fraser and Keri Russell fan, so the thought of all three of them together in one movie made me want to see the film.
However, being that this was not a action film, like Brendan and Harrison are normally cast in, the selection of this movie was soon determined to be a mistake.
The movie was rated PG, so I was expecting a movie with no swearing, a good plot, and a few heart rending moments, seeing as how it is based on a true story, and is the story of a family that has 2 children plagued with a disease that kills kids before they reach teenage status.
Extraordinary Measures can definitely tug at your heartstrings, as it sucks you into its web the moment that you sit down when you see the two kids in wheelchairs and hooked up to breathing tubes.
The movie, however, did not deliver on the no swearing that is normally associated with PG movies. I believe I counted 25 different swear words, and cringed on more than one occasion because of hearing a string of profanity. And it was not the "normal"(if I can use such a term) swear words associated with PG films; the only swear word that I did not hear was the f-word. Yes, you read that right; this PG film used basically the whole gamut of profanity (which included the actual words for bastige, heck, darn, crap, sob, and even God darn). Considering the fact that every time that you saw Harrison Ford on screen, he was swearing, it almost made me want to get up out of my seat and leave the theater and try to go see The Princess and the Frog. Now, if you don't know my stance on profanity in movies, please go read my blog entitled "Why, Hollywood, Why" and you will understand why I am offended by any profanity in movies.
Concerning the plot, it was a fairly straight-forward plot: parents want a cure for their children, one parent finds a doctor who has a theoretical cure, and they spend the rest of the movie trying to perfect it and release it so the parents' children can get better. And of course, the drama is there with problems with funding; one child on her deathbed. But, having said that, I had a hard time accepting Brendan Fraser as a viable dramatic performer. I believe this is his first movie that was not either a comedy or a action film, and it definitely showed. His attempt at being dramatic consisted mainly of him squinting up his eyes and saying his lines. Harrison Ford and Keri Russell, on the other hand, both gave fairly good performances, but they were brought down by being in the scene with Brendan.
All in all, this is a movie that will find its home on Lifetime or the Hallmark channel, and may warrant watching when it comes onto basic cable; but, I cannot in good faith recommend anyone buying this movie unless they have to have every movie that one of the main actors is in.



Plot: 7.5/10
Humor: 8/10
Family Friendly Language: 2/10
"Family Friendly" Violence: 10/10
Nudity/Suggestive Situations: 9.5/10
Overall Movie Rating: 7.4/10

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Review of "Sherlock Holmes"

This past Saturday, I went to the movies with my wife to see one of the Holiday blockbusters, Sherlock Holmes. I went in not expecting much, after hearing several mediocre reviews from other reviewers. After sitting through about twenty minutes of commercials and trailers, the main attraction started, and almost immediately I was hit by an "action" sequence with a voice-over by Sherlock himself, Robert Downey, Jr. as he was describing the actions he was taking to incapacitate one of the bad guy's henchmen, with the moves being slowed down to show the impact on the other person. But, as soon as the henchmen was down, to my surprise, the whole scene played out again, this time in real time. This double the action for the same person played out three times in the movie, and that was one of the only real detractors that I could find.
The story itself was something that you would have expected from Sir Doyle himself, with a twist every time that you thought that you had the plot figured out, and also with foreshadowings of what will no doubt be a sequel given the ending of the movie.
The comedic back and forth between Downey and Law definitely had the crowd that I watched the movie with laughing, and there was only a couple of jokes that made me groan.
There was not any swearing that I heard during the entire film, which for Hollywood in general, and Guy Ritchie in particular, is almost unheard of. I am guessing the reason for the PG-13 rating was due to all the violence and the one "nudity" scene, with a double entendre by Holmes to a chambermaid about "the key to his freedom lying under the pillow" suggestively placed between his legs.
All in all, this is most definitely a movie that I would see again, and look forward to getting the DVD with the digital copy for my iPod.

Plot: 9.5/10
Humor: 9.1/10
Family Friendly Language: 10/10
"Family Friendly" Violence: 8.7/10
Nudity/Suggestive Situations: 9.7/10
Overall Movie Rating: 9.3/10

Disagree with what I have to say? Please leave your comments below or send me an e-mail at childofking88@aol.com