A Throwback to the earlier Stephen King

The Dead Zone by Stephen King may just be the strangest thing I have ever read by him. Unlike all of his other novels, not the Bachman books, there is no evil guy in the narrative. This is a distinct deviation from the style which King generally adapts. In his books, there is a primary evil character who is thrust with the responsibility to drive the narrative and thus make the plot more interesting. But the lack of one in this book makes it for a different kind of read, almost bordering on the literary fiction genre.

Bigger is the new better

Mexican cineaste Guillermo del Toro is a well-known proponent of the horror and supernatural genre. He is an amazing writer and director of many notable movies which have gone on to become commercially as well as critically acclaimed hits. Most known of his offerings are The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth, the latter of which won him a nomination for screenplay. Other more commercial hits were the horror flicks HellBoy and HellBoy II which were primarily aimed at the American audiences. In Pacific Rim, he has returned with a modern take on monsters invading planet Earth albeit with a twist, they come from underneath the seas.

A glimpse into celeb-dom

The Afterparty is a good example of a book which I ended up liking after I started reading it more and more. It traces the lives of four people over the span of one birthday night. The first is of course the protagonist – Hugo Marks – the actor whose birthday provides the opportunity for everyone to get into the mess they did. Then we have Melody who is his supermodel wife. Thirdly, we have the young pop-star boyfriend of Melody – Calvin Vance and finally Michael Kight – a journalist who’s attending the party reluctantly after being given a colleague’s invitation. The plot, however, revolves around William Mendez’ emails to an agent, Valerie Morrell, alternated with chapters about the entire happenings of this one evening. However, Mendez does not want to reveal his identity and so they decide to get hold of a columnist named Leo Benedictus to portray as the writer.

Love in 140 characters

Goodnight Tweetheart by Teresa Medeiros is a breezy summer-afternoon read for anyone who wants to feel a little romance. Having seen “You have got mail” and read the couple of books by Daniel Glattauer – Love Virtually and Every Seventh Wave which immortalized online romances via emails, one can’t but help expect this book to be as good too. But boy, does it fail and how? There are umpteen things that are not right with this book.

A Lavish Painting of a Movie

It is not often that you get a mash of many elements in a movie and expect it to be good. With more regularity than not, the end-result turns out to be a decent attempt at good movie-making but stays far and away from that desired end. Lootera, Vikramaditya Motwane’s new movie, is one of those rare gems that seem to have got it all right. The movie is etched on an epic canvas, with strokes done so boldly yet perfectly that a tiny part of you wants it never to end. You would want to capture that moment when you first laid your eyes on a piece of art and make it your own, away from all of the world, hidden in the sweet refuge of the innermost nooks and crannies of your mind. Lootera achieves that because it is simply a work of art, a rare novelty, in today’s celluloid offerings.

Henry Cavill as Man of Steel

Like the Batman series, Superman too has been screaming for a makeover from quite some time now. It was a sigh of relief when Zach Snyder of 300 and Watchmen fame decided to reboot the epic tale of Superman. To add to that, Christopher Nolan was the producer as well as the co-writer of “Man of Steel.” One can so feel the influence of Nolan in this movie. Like the Dark Knight trilogy, Nolan doesn’t fail to bring in the dark extravaganza coupled with loads of special effects. Very unfortunately for the film though, Man of Steel doesn’t shine as much the Dark Knight series.