Tag Archives: Tom Cruise

January 27, 2023

Friday Notes (Jan 27, 2023)

I still haven’t gotten used to writing “2023” — it feels like a misspelling. Perhaps in part because it’s an odd number. It’s not prime, and it’s kind of cute that it’s the product 7×17×17=2023. Lucky triple sevens! And a full house, sevens over aces. (Numerology would be another of those things that are fun but which I don’t believe.)

My 2022 plan for Serious Spring Cleaning didn’t end up nearly aggressive as planned. There’s still too much junk. And still too many (piles of) notes and notebooks.

So: Serious Spring Cleaning, take two, and another edition of Friday Notes.

16 Comments | tags: Ally McBeal, Chelsea Handler, Knives Out, Lilyhammer, Mission: Impossible, Octavia E. Butler, Tom Cruise | posted in Books, Friday Notes, Movies, TV

November 17, 2022

John Wick

By Wyrd Smythe

This weekend I had the immense pleasure of watching all three extant John Wick movies. Part of the pleasure was watching them over the course of only two evenings. While the first film, in multiple ways, stands alone, the latter two (and presumably chapter four coming out next year) tell a single story.

If you like gun fu action thrillers and somehow haven’t seen these, you’ve missed something rather special. The attention to detail, the tactical reality of the fight scenes, and a whole lot more, place these movies, especially the first, among the best of their kind.

They’re a wonderful contrast to what movies seem to have turned into.

12 Comments | tags: assassin movies, John Wick, Keanu Reeves, Quentin Tarantino, The Matrix, Tom Cruise | posted in Movies

July 1, 2022

Friday Notes (Jul 1, 2022)

By Wyrd Smythe

The worst of it is the three posts in my Drafts folder that I can’t seem to move forward. They sit there, woefully incomplete, mocking me while other posts spring forth, quietly get dressed, and move on out the virtual door.

They’re stuck, in part, by a need for diagrams, and I’ve been stuck between whether to load my increasingly obsolete graphics app onto my new-ish laptop or invest (time, money, effort) in something new.

And life keeps happening, and that leads to another edition of Friday Notes.

16 Comments | tags: Bentley, hail, hail stone, Tom Cruise | posted in Friday Notes, Movies

May 23, 2022

Death on the Nile

By Wyrd Smythe

Back in 2020, I posted about my surprise rediscovery of Agatha Christie. The initial discovery is lost in memory, a hand-me-down from my dad. I favored heroic action figures back then, Superman, Sherlock Holmes, Clint Eastwood. I enjoyed Christie’s Hercule Poirot but filed the rest of her work under ‘dowdy British library murder mystery’ and ignored it.

A mistake. My surprise discovery of 2020 was that Agatha Christie was a fascinating genius who rightfully earned the title Queen of Mystery.

Last week I watched a recent adaptation of Death on the Nile (1937), one of the more well-known Hercule Poirot novels. I had high hopes, but I can only give it a weak Eh! rating.

8 Comments | tags: Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot, Jack Reacher, Kenneth Branagh, Lee Child, Tom Cruise | posted in Books, Movies, Mystery Monday

May 16, 2022

Jack Reacher

By Wyrd Smythe

It started when I watched Jack Reacher (2012), starring Tom Cruise. It was pretty good, and it’s as much fun seeing Robert Duvall in something as it is Christopher Walken. Plus, the bad guy is Werner Herzog! As it turns out, casting Cruise as Reacher is… interesting, but I’ll come back to that.

The movie is an adaptation of the 2005 Lee Child novel, One Shot, the ninth book in his Jack Reacher series. I enjoyed the movie enough that I thought I’d check out the book — my library had it (as well as the others in the series).

I’ve been binging on them ever since. To the point I’ve now read 16 of the 24 Lee Child Jack Reacher novels.

19 Comments | tags: Jack Reacher, Lee Child, Tom Cruise | posted in Books, Mystery Monday, TV

February 19, 2015

Remaking the Classics

By Wyrd Smythe

The Day the Earth Stood Still It started out as conversation about how Edge of Tomorrow is the best big screen SF movie to come along in a good long while. That led to a ranking of recent SF movies with very high marks going to Elysium and Ender’s Game. It also touched on that Tom Cruise has made four — no, five! — SF films, at least two of which are very good.

Of course that led to talk of actors and how Jodie Foster and Matt Damon seem (unlike, for example, poor Sandra Bullock) to have excellent taste in what scripts they accept. If either of those two — let alone both — is in a movie, it’s probably pretty decent. Talk of actors in SF films naturally lead to Keanu Reeves whose ancestry and acting style make him such a perfect choice in certain roles.

And that lead to what a damn shame it is they tried to remake The Day the Earth Stood Still.

8 Comments | tags: Edge of Tomorrow, Elysium (movie), Ender's Game, Forbidden Planet, Gone With the Wind, Hamlet, Jodie Foster, Johnny Mnemonic, Keanu Reeves, Kenneth Branagh, Laurence Olivier, Matt Damon, Philip K. Dick, remakes, Sandra Bullock, science fiction, science fiction movies, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Tom Cruise, William Gibson | posted in Movies