Two Reviews You Can Use!

I finally saw this the other night:
I thought the first two thirds of it was fantastic. It was the film adaptation of a comic book that someone like me, a recovering comic book geek, has always dreamed of. It had everything. It had action, well drawn characters, great cinematography, a decent script, cool gadgets, guns, babes, the whole nine yards.

And then they went and ruined it with the last third of the film. I hated the whole Harvey Dent/Two Face subplot. It was fine as long it took a back seat to the battle between the Joker and Batman but when they let it take center stage, it was a one way ticket to snooze town for me.

All in all though, I still recommend this movie for the following reasons:

• Heath Ledger.
• Heath Ledger.
• Heath Ledger.

You got a sense during his short career that this guy could act. He was good in things like Ten Things I Hate About You early in his career and by the time Brokeback Mountain came along you saw he'd graduated to the master class of movie acting. Then he went and turned in the best performance by anyone in a film in the past 30 years. I'm not shitting you. He's that good in this role. He's so good in this movie in fact that it drags like crazy when he's not in in the camera frame. I'd be surprised if he did not get a posthumous Oscar nomination for his performance. And if he gets nominated, he ought to be a shoo in to win.

Is this film worth your time? Yes. Will you love it? Probably not but you will be impressed by it.

I just finished reading this the other night:

I had read a review of this book when it first came out and I filed it away in the part of my brain that was supposed to remember book titles. Unfortunately for me that part of my brain took a vacation for many years and I forgot the title but not the premise of the book. So I searched in vain for many years for a book about dogs that could talk. I picked up one book by a female author about talking dogs but it wasn't this one, I ended up reading it anyway but I didn't really like it. Then as luck would have it I was in the foyer of the local used book store the other day and I saw the book I had been searching for for the past few years. I paid the two bucks they were asking for it and I took it home.

Monster Dogs is a quick though at times disturbing read. It tells the fictional tale of a group of dogs that have been bred to become more like us humans. They are bred for their size and intelligence and they are surgically altered beginning almost at their birth, they're fitted with arms and given voice boxes. The idea, hatched by their creator Augustus Rank, was to turn them into ultra loyal dog soldiers.

Their story is told in part by one of the dogs, a human female who befriends the dogs, through the diaries of their creator, and through an opera libretto of their early years as the dog/human hybrids. It's a fascinating story really and the author, Kirsten Bakis, tells it very well. Her writing is spare and elegant and her story telling, for the most part, is direct and engaging. Her novel is at times achingly melancholy, bizarre, and compelling. The only let down is towards the very end when she lets the story wander but I was willing to overlook it due to the strength of the rest of the book. I recommend this book highly but I want to warn all those pet lovers out there that there are parts to it that you will find very disturbing to read.