Extremely condensed reviews: Daughter of Regals, Dzur, and Our Man in Camelot

Daughter of Regals and Other Tales (Stephen Donaldson)

I have the same comments as of Reave the Just and Other Tales, namely that I much, much prefer his short stories to his novels, because they all have very interesting ideas, however I find it very draining that they're all about nasty people, nasty situations, and depression.

Roll on disfiguring diseases, people wallowing in self-hate, people cavorting in casual mistreatment of others, destruction of beautiful creatures and last shreds of hope, etc, etc. Obviously great literature is stereotypically associated with black despair, but I get a certain "unhealthy obsession" vibe.

Dzur (Stephen Brust)

I have the same comments as of the last few Vlad Taltos novels. It was fascinating for what it revealed about the overall story of the series, but I didn't really find the novel itself as engaging as some of the others.

Our Man in Camelot

I have the same comment as I really loved all the previous Anthony Price novels, even though friends have warned me that the couple immediately preceding this weren't necessarily up to snuff, but although it followed in the general practice of Price novels, and was fairly interesting in the characters and history, I didn't really engage with it as much as the others.

( Major spoilers for Our Man in Camelot and War Games )

Recently released films

Stupidest title and tagline

The Unborn. "It wants to be born"

Content warning so stupid its actually physically painful:

The runner up was "Contains one use of strong language and moderate sex references", which was originally going to win the "stupidest content warning" category, on account of making me laugh out loud. That was a British content warning. Then I read an American content warning.

"Rated R for frenetic strong bloody violence throughout, crude and graphic sexual content, nudity and pervasive language.

OK, so being specific in warnings could be a helpful concept, but it just sounds, you know, really stupid. I actually assumed the second was a pardoy, and that IMDB had become completely open content, and went off to find a citation (MPAA).

Apparently those are ACTUAL categories. "Frenetic strong bloody violence throughout, crude and graphic sexual content, nudity and pervasive language" excluding bloody violence, sounds like my love live. The point being, to me, pervasive language sounds like a good thing. Have these people ever, you know, read a book? Or seen a play? Or listened to the radio? Those are nothing BUT language. I can understand that people under the age of 18 might conceivably want to avoid a film where the language is not carefully confined to small self-contained segmants, but I don't see any point in legally requiring them to!

Premise so stupid it's actually physically painful:

Crank: High Voltage.

"The first ‘Crank’ movie, saw Jason Statham poisoned then forced to keep his adrenalin up to stay alive, This time, Chev is in a spot of bother with a Chinese gangster, who has removed his heart and has replaced with a mechanical one that needs to be jolted with an electric charge to stay pumping."

Crank: High Voltage also received honourable mention in the "stupidest title" category. Come to think of it, I think that was the film the "content warning so stupid it's physically painful" came from too. Not that that means it has to be a bad film.