Julia (2021)

Rotten Tomatoes

Julia (2021): Documentary of Julia Child. Like a Wikipedia article on film, it covers her whole life but barely captures the intellectual rigor that made her cook book a best seller and the joie de vivre that made her a star TV chef. Still, a good place to start. B-

TIL: We Have 50x More Heat Waves than in 1980

By now, we all know that climate and weather are different. Or we should know. But even those who know still talk about the weather wrong. When we experience a heat wave like our current one, instead of blaming climate change, we instead dismiss the weather as simply a chance event, a quirk, something we have no influence over. As the skeptics have long conditioned us to respond, we just say we've always had heat waves. That Dallas summer of 1980 was a real scorcher, right?

Nope (2022)

Rotten Tomatoes

Nope (2022): It had me at Jordan Peele. Strong characters and an eerie atmosphere with a crazed chimp and a murderous cloud, but it comes up short when it's time to explain what's going on. Is it a Western? Horror? Sci-fi? Social commentary? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Is it good? Yep. B-

Random Thoughts: Russians Win the Space Race to the Moon

Tweets from July, 2022:

• 2022-07-05: For All Mankind - S01 (TV 2019): Alternative history of NASA where Russians win the Space Race to the Moon. A few references to alternative facts that people familiar with history will appreciate, but also a lot of soap opera storylines and convenient plot developments. B-
• 2022-07-07: Review: Sea of Tranquility: A time travel story in which a glitch in time brings centuries together. And sends characters from earlier novels into alternate timelines. These stories slowly weave together into a mesmerizing whole. B+
• 2022-07-10: In a world of Jenna Ellises, be a Simone Biles.

After the jump, more random thoughts.

Review: Cloud Cuckoo Land

From Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

“Ah,” says the first sister, “fine choice,” and they sit on either side of him and the one who fetched the book says, “On a day like this, when it’s chilly and damp, and you can’t get warm, sometimes all you need are the Greeks”—she shows him a page, dense with verse—“to fly you all the way around the world to somewhere hot and stony and bright.” "
	Amazon

Cloud Cuckoo Land: A mashup of the fall of Constantinople, a modern-day crime thriller, and a future sci-fi journey to another star, all connected by an ancient Greek story. The characters are memorable, the plots compelling, but the sum is less than the parts. B+