Movie Review: The Invisible Man (2020)

 The Invisible Man (2020) written and directed by Leigh Whannell

Cecilia (Elisabeth Moss) is literally trapped in a horrible marriage. Her husband Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) is manipulative, possessive, and a brilliant scientist. Their California seaside estate has a tall wall around it. As the movie starts, Cecilia sneaks away in the middle of the night, shutting down the security cameras and heading over the fence to a rendezvous with her younger sister Emily (Harriet Dyer). As Cecilia leaves the garage, their dog bangs into the car, setting off the car alarm. Her race to the road is just barely successful. The movie jumps two weeks later. Cecilia is hiding out with a friend of her sister. Emily comes by and tells her that Adrian committed suicide. The sisters visit the executor of Adrian's estate, his brother Tom (Michael Dorman), who explains that Cecilia will inherit five million dollars in monthly installment of one hundred thousand dollars as long as she is not charged with any crimes and is mentally competent. She's happy about that, though still paranoid about Adrian's influence over her life. Odd things start happening to her, making her think that Adrian is still alive and invisibly torturing her. Everyone else thinks she is going crazy.

The movie does a good job for the first third leaving viewers in suspense about whether Adrian is really alive and messing around with her. Tom does have a box with Adrian's alleged ashes. So maybe Tom is trying to keep the money by torturing her? Whoever is causing her problems doesn't need to put a lot of effort in since she is already skittish about almost everything. Also, her judgment is naive, like when she promises to set aside money for the friend's daughter as a college fund just to be nice. Cecilia grows less and less passive throughout the film, a nice build up of her character. The story has some good twists and tense scenes. The special effects are top-notch and the ending is typical and satisfying.

Recommended--I went into this with low expectations and was pleasantly surprised more than once during the movie.

Book Review: All Systems Red by Martha Wells

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

In this future, corporations provide resources for interplanetary expeditions. One of the resources is a SecUnit, a cyborg which is more robot than human. Typically the SecUnits stay in their armor and people can't see their organic parts (like their faces). The SecUnits follow their instructions strictly thanks to a governor module that circumvents free will. The main character in this story is a SecUnit whose governor module is faulty and the SecUnit has gone about reprogramming itself to function independently. It has given itself the name Murderbot but does not broadcast it because, let's be honest, nobody wants their personal safety being handled by something called "Murderbot." Its current contract is to a planetary exploration group that is assessing a new planet. Something is wrong, though, because a hostile fauna attacks them that wasn't on the planet's pre-assessment. Also their maps of the planet have lots of missing areas. These errors could be glitches but another group surveying the planet is attacked, so it's clear something bad is happening. 

The story is told from the first-person perspective of Murderbot, who has a very interesting personality. It's sarcastic, a little pessimistic, and more practically minded than the scientists with which it serves. It feels awkward because of its secret and just generally not understanding how humans behave, especially when they treat Murderbot as an equal. As a side project, Murderbot watches a lot of entertainment, mostly as a distraction but occasionally getting some insight on the way people behave. Unfortunately serial dramas do not usually match up with reality. Like a lot of science fiction semi-humans, Murderbot works to figure out its identity, its place in the world, and what it wants out of life.

The book is a very quick read and very entertaining. The comedy and action are well balanced. The world-building is fun. Muderbot's existential curiosity is handled lightly and naturally flows from the character and the plot. There are more books in the Murderbot Diaries and I am sure to read more.

Highly recommended.

Lent Plans 2021

It's Ash Wednesday again, a day "of fasting and abstinence," as described in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2043.  Fasting is eating much less food than you normally would; abstinence in this context is not eating meat. The point of this penance is not to punish yourself. It's to "acquire mastery over our instincts and freedom of heart." Rather than being led around by our appetites, we practice saying "no" to them so that we are free to focus on other, more important things. Eating food is important but not the most important thing in our lives. Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are the two prescribed days for fast and abstinence in America, with the Fridays in Lent only requiring abstinence from meat. So the obligation is not so great. Often, people add other days for themselves or make other sacrifices, the classical "giving up something for Lent." My plan for this year is my tradition giving up of graphic novel reading, though I do have quite a backlog so it probably won't be obvious to blog readers. I'm also going to give up my evening alcoholic drink. Usually I have a beer or something else after the kids go to bed.

The other traditional practices in Lent (in addition to fasting) are prayer and almsgiving. For prayer, I am using the daily meditation book called A Year with the Angels. We will start up morning devotion at home with the children. We take five minutes in the morning to sing a hymn, read a little meditation or passage from the Bible. Maybe we'll light a candle too, since that's fun for the kids.

For almsgiving, we will continue to buy something extra for the local food pantry when we shop for groceries. And the money I save on alcohol will go to charity, too.

For spiritual reading, I am going to read To Know Christ Jesus by Frank Sheed and The Resurrection of the Shroud: New Scientific, Medical and Archeological Evidence by Mark Antonacci. Also, our church is sponsoring a challenge to read the whole New Testament in Lent, calling it the Saint Jerome Challenge. 

We don't have any really big family plans this year for Lent other than morning devotion.

Book Review: My Hero Academia Vol. 22 by Kohei Horikoshi

My Hero Academia Volume 22 by Kohei Horikoshi

The students go through more rounds of training by fighting in an empty landscape. The battles between groups of students from Class A and from Class B provide plenty of  action and introduce new characters with new quirks. But the story is not really going anywhere interesting for me and I am having a harder and harder time keeping track of everybody. A lot of the action seems like it is better suited to anime than to manga.

Slightly recommended. I might be bailing on this series.

Valentine's Day 2021

As a Valentine's Day celebration, our local independent chocolate shop, Sweet Cascades, offered a "make truffles at home" class. We signed up, which meant we picked up a kit the week before and started work the day before.

The first step was making the ganache. The kit contained a half pound of dark chocolate. We heated up half a cup of heavy whipping cream (which was not included in the kit because of refrigeration requirements) to mix with the chocolate.

Start of cooking

Once the cream simmered, we took it off the heat and added the chocolate. We patiently waited for the melting to happen.

Combining ingredients

My daughter whisked the mixture until it was smooth. Finally, we covered it and stuck in the fridge for the next day. We found out the next day that if we wanted to add flavor, we should have added it during the mixing. The trick is to keep the liquid level the same. So if you are adding a tablespoon of rum or bourbon, take out a tablespoon of the heavy whipping cream.

Whisky (not whiskey) business

In the fridge

The next day (i.e. the Saturday before Valentine's Day), we took out the ganache and melted the other chocolates in small bowls for dipping/coating the ganache. We had a half pound of milk chocolate and half a pound of dark chocolate. According to instructions, we microwaved each for a minute at half power, stirred, and heated them more until we had a smooth consistency. A chocolatier needs to be careful as chocolate can easily burn! We also took out the ganache about an hour early, but it got too warm and didn't hold its form as well as it could. Possibly we mixed in too much heavy cream the day before.

The kit included a melon baller for rolling the ganache and various items for sprinkling on the truffles.

A ready work station

We started up the Zoom and enjoyed a bit of conversation before we got to work. The work was messy enough that we did not take pictures. Since our ganache wasn't as chill as it could have been, the balls were a bit lumpy. Dipping was tricky too. We used spoons and forks to dip the ganache balls into the melted chocolate. The chocolate outside solidified fairly quickly, giving a good coating.

Finished work

We had leftover dipping chocolate. We checked our cabinets and then dipped some marshmallows, some peanuts, and some cashews. The nuts we did as clusters, not individual nuts, because that would be...nuts.

Nut clusters

We sampled some of the chocolates that night, and then enjoyed the fruits of our labor on Valentine's Day. 

Movie Review: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951)

Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951) directed by Charles Lamont

Abbott and Costello graduate from a detective academy and are given the night shift at a local detective agency. A guy shows up offering them money to escort him to an address. The guy is Tommy Nelson (Arthur Franz), a boxer who is accused of killing his manager and is on the run from the law. He claims he's innocent and wants to find proof. The address is the lab of a doctor who is Tommy's friend and is working on an invisibility formula. The formula is the same one from the original Invisible Man movie (there's even a picture of Claude Rains in the lab) and has the same problem--it drives the recipient crazy and there's no reversing formula. The doctor is working on the cure and refuses to inject Tommy. Then the cops show up and the doctor goes downstairs to stall them. Tommy injects himself and works with Abbott and Costello to prove his innocence. Costello winds up mistaken for a great boxer (it helps if you have some invisible fists) as they investigate the boxing corruption that got Tommy falsely accused. 

The movie takes the plot of The Invisible Man Returns but switches it from a British coal-mine owner falsely accused of killing his brother to an American boxer falsely accused of killing his manager. A few of the special effects look like they were spliced out of the earlier film. And Tommy has a "I can rule the world" speech like the one Vincent Price delivered. The invisible man stuff in the story is mostly unoriginal. On the other hand, the comedy is a nice mixture of verbal sparring and physical gags that Abbott and Costello are so good at. One scene has Costello surreptitiously stealing cash from Abbott in a variety of funny ways. The final gag is ridiculous in good and bad ways. Overall, the movie is a fun, light comedy.

Recommended.

Book Review: Hawkeye Vol. 1 by M. Fraction et al.

Hawkeye Volume 1: My Life as a Weapon written by Matt Fraction and art by David Aja and Javier Pulido

Hawkeye (aka Clint Barton) is a characters who looks less interesting on paper than other Marvel heroes. As an Avenger, he has no superhuman abilities. He's an amazing shot with a bow and arrow, an antiquated weapon. He does have a quiver full of trick arrows. He has the graceful athleticism that every other superhero has, more or less. Hawkeye solo adventures seem like they would not be that interesting. In this book, the writer and artists come up with some good stories fighting organized crime or other "normal" bad guys. Clint is teamed up with Kate Bishop, who has taken over the role of Hawkeye after Clint was presumed dead a long time ago (a story too complicated to get into here). They make a fun team as mentor and mentee. Also, Clint is a lot more freewheeling in contrast to Kate's more stable character. In one adventure, a video tape of Clint assassinating a foreign terrorist has been found (the official story is Navy Seals killed the terrorist). The tape will go to the highest bidder but once it gets out, the reputations of Hawkeye and the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D. will be tanked. So Clint goes to Marakesh to put his bid in at the auction where all the bad guys (Wilson Fisk, AIM, Hydra, Madame Masque, etc) want a piece of the action. The story has fun twists and action.

Overall, the book is good, giving a minor character his own chance to shine. Clint has a fun personality and enough moral code to show why he belongs on the Avengers. Some of the situations are more hard PG-13, with some arrows sticking out of eyes or some awkward intimate moments. Weirdly, an issue of Young Avengers featuring Kate and Clint is included though that story is clearly out of continuity with the rest of the book.

Recommended. I'll probably read some more of this series.