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Review – Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

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My wife and I were on a mission. 2017 had nearly come and gone…and we had missed nearly all of its theatrical offerings during their Regal runs. But surely – we thought – surely we can catch one or two films when they hit our beloved dollar theater.

Not a chance. We were discovering a truth we had only heard whispers of by sleep-deprived souls in dark and dreary corridors: “Once you are parents, you will NEVER go to the movies again.”

GULP.

For story-lovers such as us, a life confined to the twin-prisons of Netflix and Hulu seemed quite bleak indeed. We were determined to break free.

How to Rate Books & Movies

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For better or for worse, the film has ended. The book is complete. You know what comes next.

Step 1: Stagger out of the theater or pry yourself off the sofa.

Step 2: If the story was epic and well-executed, gush words of approval and ovation. Or, if the story was….not so much of the above, cry with disappointment and bemoan what could have been.

Step 3: Take a deep breath, and move on with life. Or…are you kidding? The world needs to hear my churning, albeit calculated thoughts!

Rid Yourself of the Wrong Writing Goals

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Look at the date this post was published. Now, without looking at your calendar (no cheating!), what happened 58 days before that?

If you guessed (or knew) that 58 days previous marked the moment 2017 bowed down and surrendered to 2018, you’d be absolutely correct. The transition from one year to the next is a time to deeply breathe in hope for improvements, for change, for new beginnings, and a time to exhale dusty what-could-have-beens. Dreams unfulfilled. Broken relationships in need of mending. Stories and novels stagnating in the brain’s bowels. On January 1st, we make solemn pacts with our soul that this year will be different.

WHAT ARE STORIES?

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I never heard the kick.

Nor the shouts of warning.

Or the woosh of the ball.

But I remember lying on my back, the breath knocked out of me, a soccer ball casually rolling away.

I was about 9 and had gone to the field to watch my uncle play pick-up soccer. Of course, a book accompanied us.

I don’t remember feeling any pain when the stray ball walloped the side of my face. But I still remember the book I immediately started reading again. Brown cover, I think. Inside, the adventurous pursuits of a young boy and girl becoming millionaires off selling toothpaste—3 cents a jar, 2 cents for material, 1 cent profit.

Their pursuits stayed with me decades later, as did the Boxcar Children and Hardy Boys before them, and four Pevensie’s, a couple of Bagginses, and countless others afterwards.

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Plot and Panel: Comic Strips as a Storytelling Form

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Stories come in many forms and through many mediums –

Television shows, movies, theater, graphic novels, short stories, novels, and poetry – yet how many consider comic strips to be a storytelling technique? I certainly did not until I recently ran across two masters of the art, Charles Schultz and Bill Watterson, who nearly perfected this type of storytelling in their daily classics.

Review – G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009)

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I have no idea how to rate this movie.

If you haven’t stopped reading yet, I suspect it’s for the curiosity of discovering what folly will come from this reviewer’s mind next. If so, never fear, for you’re in good company! After all, how better to start formally reviewing films than with one that splits its audience straight through the Prime Meridian? One that’s not so horribly bad to be drooling with deliciously dreadful things to say about it, but neither affording the opportunity for tremendous and emotional gushing.

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Stories come in many forms and through many mediums –

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