3x Jack Hunter: Jack Hunter and the Star of Heaven

So, Littmann met his fiery end, the artifact was taken care of and Jack and Nadia became an item...

Still, I felt that Littmann behaved more like a jilted lover than an ex-partner of Jack's. I mean, when the Russians shot Jack, the way Littmann yelled "NO!" Or when he threatened Jack, telling him that if Jack didn't work with him, he would kill him - and then Jack belted him one... and Littmann STILL couldn't do it! He still couldn't shoot Jack. And when the Russians had Jack on his knees, guns pointed at him - Littmann's LOOK! And when he told Jack that he had been protecting him the whole time. And when he yelled at Jack that he had ruined everything! Seriously, an ex couldn't be more vicious, LOL :P

What I really loved about this series were the exteriors, the setting. Gorgeous! This last film was set and filmed in Turkey and wow, beautiful. The monasteries and churches, the city... Wow.

Aaaaaaaaand I'm done with Jack Hunter! :)

Book #40

"In These Words Vol. 1" by GuiltPleasure

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

A very graphic manga telling the story of a psychiatrist, Asano Katsuya, who is asked to evaluate a sadistic, psychopathic serial killer before his trial. But the murderer starts playing mind games with Katsuya until the good doctor can't distinguish between dream and reality.

This is not a manga for fainthearted people. It deals with rape and abuse in very raw, graphic and unapologetic terms. It doesn't try to prettify it or make it okay though it does deal with the beginnings of the Stockholm Syndrome. A very strange but gripping story.

Podfic rec: Inception

"Skin Deep" by starlingthefool, read by anatsuno | AU | Arthur/Eames | A story that starts with a spiral, ends with a fire, and is stained with ink and blood in the middle. A tattoo shop AU. | 1hr. 52min.

Eames maneuvered him through the door and then leaned Arthur against the wall. "Take off your jacket."

"Are we having sex?"

Eames bit his lip to suppress a smile. "If I ever take advantage of you, love, it'll be because you're emotionally vulnerable or drunk, but not both at the same time."

"That's too bad," Arthur muttered, letting his jacket slip off.

What a great fic! I'm not a big fan of tattoos in general but seeing the whole thing from the POV of someone who actually loves tattoos and works in the shop? Fascinating.

Johnny Mnemonic

Considering my mentioning Keanu Reeves' movies a short while ago, I decided to finally read the short story by William Gibson on which the movie Johnny Mnemonic was based. Since I saw the movie at the cinema all those years ago, I've seen people talk about how bad it was compared to the story. Time and time again. Over and over. So I wanted to check it out for myself. And...

I don't get it, the bashing, I mean. William Gibson's idea is nothing short of brilliant, that's true. A cyber punk story about a guy with a microchip implanted in his brain. Considering he wrote it in 1981, I was impressed - by the idea. The execution though, was hardly brilliant, I would even say poor.

The story is really short, in my e-book reader, it had only 29 pages. But short or not, the characters were two-dimensional and I didn't care one iota about them. The author obviously sacrificed character depth to a gimmicky setting. He filled this tiny piece with so much description and in such a rapid fire style that most of it just flew over my head. Yet the characters felt flat. Patricia Briggs, Mike Resnick and others proved that you can write a short story with deep characters that the reader can connect with. William Gibson, not so much. I was more interested in the Magnetic Dog Sisters - two tall women, one white, one black, lovers, one of them used to be a man - than in Johnny or Molly.

So, I can now honestly say that I like the movie much better. The film made me actually care about Johnny, about his survival - the short story did not.

But it's simply MADE for a TV series, a sci-fi procedural - a story about a guy with a storage chip in his head (Johnny Mnemonic) and his technologically enhanced bodyguard (Molly Millions). Why nobody has picked it up yet is beyond me *shrugs*

3x LGBT: Breakfast on Pluto

What a weird movie. And not in a good way, at least for me. It's full of quirky characters and over the top situations - which I wouldn't mind per se. What I did mind was the main characters - I didn't like any of them and especially not Patrick "Kitten" Braeden, the lead character. Played by...





... Cillian Murphy. Oh, Cillian was gorgeous and his acting was top notch. I just hated Kitten. Kitten sailed through life stirring troubles where ever she went - and I'll call Kitten a "she" even though I never understood if her gender issues were real or just pretended to stir even more trouble, if Kitten was transgender, transsexual or a transvestite, that was never properly explained. She was a twink and she loved to let older men take care of her. She had no goal, no ambition in life, she ended up hustling in the streets, for Christ's sake, and she didn't care one frickin' bit. IMHO, she needed a shrink more than anything else. Very, very unlikable girl.

And then there were her friends, people she went to school with. A mentally challenged boy, the sweetest of all of them, who got killed by a car bomb, a young girl who was into drugs and a wannabe revolutionary who joined the IRA and was shot in the head by them as a traitor.

The most interesting thing, IMHO, was Kitten's relationship/friendship with Father Liam played by Liam Neeson. I loved that he stood up for Kitten in the end.

So... I don't regret seeing the film but I don't think I'll watch it ever again. Kitten was just too unlikable for me to re-visit her any time soon.