Sunday, February 17, 2013

Another one for the Bucket List, and a movie review too

As I have said before, I don't know what's on my Bucket List until it happens.  As a retired geek, I don't shy away from techie stuff, but it's been a long time since I had a paid job doing techie stuff.  In today's information age, there is so much to keep up with.  I have to depend on my kids to tell me about the latest technology.

My latest new thing is Red Box.  Yeah, I know they've been around for over ten years, but I don't usually have a reason to rent movies.  With my Adult Attention Deficit Disorder, I find it much easier to focus on a movie in a dark theater.  If I watch a movie at home, I'm multi-tasking all over the place.

It took Quvenzhané Wallis to make me think I should rent a movie.  The Beasts of the Southern Wild didn't make it to any theaters in Raleigh, or Durham where #1 son lives, until after the Oscar nominations for movie, director, and bast actress were announced.  Now it's appearing at a theater in Morrisville near the RDU airport.  My son had some time to hang out at my house on a recent Sunday afternoon, and used my PC to find the movie for himself on Red Box.  "It's cheap, and it's easy," he said.  (A dollar, twenty-eight with tax)  I really wanted to see the youngest Oscar Nominee in action, so the next weekend, I signed up with Red Box, and drove three miles to the Hess station pick up my movie. I tried not to look like a newbie when I swiped my credit card on the machine and waited until the big red box spat out my video.  Then I looked around to see who was watching....nobody.  I felt so proud of myself.

The movie...hmm.  It has won awards at the Cannes Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, the Deauville American Film Festival, and a bunch of others.  What seems to have impressed the judges was a cast of total unknowns, filmed on 16mm film.  Five-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis, is an obvious standout.

But what the movie was about, leave it to your own imagination.  It's a fantasy set on the Louisiana gulf, on a fictitious island set apart from the mainland by levees.  There's a storm coming, and there are huge wild boars, and melting icecaps, and a little girl trying to survive with her sick Daddy, in a place they called The Bathtub where every day is a holiday.

The little girl gets five stars.  The movie gets a foot in the door for its young producer Benh Zeitlin.

Friday, February 1, 2013

And the winner is...

I want to thank everybody who came to my blog tour. Special thanks to my blogger friends who opened up their blogs for one day to promote TELL THEM I DIED.

http://misfit4lyfe.blogspot.com/   
http://sisterscribbler.blogspot.com/   
http://kealajacobs.blogspot.com/   
http://thisisreallife.blogspot.com/   
http://brighterfuture1.blogspot.com/   
http://patricianeelydorsey.blogspot.com/   
http://headspinsfast.wordpress.com/   
http://authorspromotingauthors.blogspot.com   
http://aspnovelist.blogspot.com/

Stop by and visit them, if you missed the tour.

My email report from Goodreads says 591 people entered the giveaway for four (4) autographed copies of TELL THEM I DIED.  Goodreads selected the winners through some unknown algorithm.  The giveaway was open to US and Canadian members of Goodreads.  All the winners are from the USA, none from the North East.

And the winners are:
Kathleen from Virginia
Jeremy from Hawaii
Marque from Colorado
Tonya from Oklahoma

I put your books in the mail this morning using the cheapest method, Media Mail.  Our friend in Hawaii should expect delivery by February 16, 2013.  Happy reading!