The Pacific, Parts 2 and 3 are very different animals. While Part 2 follows the first installment pretty closely, and deals with some very fierce jungle combat, Part 3 finds our characters on leave in Australia and it’s this action-less episode that’s garnered significant criticism around the intarwebs. Now I feel like it’s my duty—nay, obligation—to level some pretty harsh criticism of my own at those who had a problem with Part 3, but I’ll try to be nice.
Those that know me well know that I love everything about the British royals—the Monarchy—so I approach a cinematic offering like The Young Victoria ready to just devour it. I’m happy to say that this film is a feast that doesn’t disappoint.
I should clarify. I do love the royals, but more than that, I love a good historical biopic film. The Young Victoria is exactly that: a dramatization of just what the name implies—the life of the young Queen Victoria. The beginning of the film covers Victoria’s growing up, her aging uncle, the King, and the power struggle that surrounded her eventual rise to the throne. Once she assumes the throne—and I hope I’m not spoiling this for anyone but she does become Queen—the rest of the film follows her settling into power, her mistakes and missteps, her personal life and, of course, her falling in love.
The Pacific is the newest venture from the Spielberg/Hanks team that brought us the Oscar-winning Saving Private Ryan and the Golden Globe-winning Band of Brothers mini-series. With a resume like that, expectations for the pair’s new mini-series were understandably through the roof and buzz surrounding their new production began, in earnest, a full four years ago.
The Pacific began airing last Sunday on HBO. It’s a ten-part mini-series which will air in installments until May 16th. Like Band of Brothers, The Pacific seems to be based around the actual stories of World War II veterans but instead of focusing the action around the European theatre of war our characters find themselves in, unsurprisingly, the Pacific. The American war with the Japanese.
Maria picked up Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend off the non-fiction new releases rack at our library. She knows me so well.
It was a pretty good read, in a way. Through the course of the book, the author, an “independent scholar” with a fairly strange name, Joshua Blu Buhs, sets out to frame the legend of Bigfoot in terms of its larger societal impact. From the outset, this seemed like a pretty interesting idea. I’ve had an interest in Bigfoot since, I think, I discovered my own big feet (size 12, not bad) so a book about society and the Bigfoot monster seemed like something good to read. But it was, to be sure, a little bit too good to be true.
