Epinions Recent Reviews for RonFranscell

Children fighting back

Sat, 10 Aug 2002 12:04:14 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell - Blessed are peacemakers, for they says things like “What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?”

...

Hollywood evolves backward

Sat, 28 Jul 2001 12:42:00 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell - Tim Burton's "Planet of the Apes" is about evolution. No, not the evolution of species, but the evolution of Hollywood in the past 30-plus years. Special effects, booming sound, highly specialized costuming and makeup and digital sets are where we are...

A new mystery cuts close to the bone

Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:42:32 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell - Mystery writers need a closed room. Not for writing privacy, but to regulate the flow of suspects in and out of a murder scene.

Odd as it sounds, Wyoming is just a big closed room, a boundless place where nobody come or goes without being...

So you wanna be in movies?

Sun, 8 Jul 2001 18:49:55 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell - Hollywood has this odd reputation for skating on the edge of America's artistic consciousness, pushing the limits, using the f-word when a d-word would be better. But when it comes down to it, Hollywood is just as hide-bound with rules, just as eager to...

Perversity made funny

Sun, 8 Jul 2001 18:05:55 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell - As funeral entertainments go -- and there are many -- "A Texas Funeral" is fairly good. It's no "Big Chill" nor "Six Feet Under," but it hews to a certain moving spirit.

Martin Sheen is Sparta Whit, a fourth-generation eccentric in Texas,...

Why we joke about tourists

Sun, 8 Jul 2001 15:42:23 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell - From Custer to Kerouac to Kaczynski, tourists in the West have left their mark ... and in many ways, the West has left its own indelible mark on them -- just ask Custer.

In 150 years of travel across the Big Empty (as pioneers called the...

Louise Erdrich and sacred circles

Mon, 25 Jun 2001 10:12:04 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell - The sacred and the profane. Faith and eroticism. Earth-drying sunlight and earth-rending flood. Night and day. Heaven and Hell ... could any of them exist without their opposite?

In her new novel, "The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No...

Gabriel's Story: The prodigal son returns

Mon, 5 Feb 2001 22:06:07 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell - The prodigal son always comes home. In life, in parable and in literature.

And he has returned once more in "Gabriel’s Story," a haunting debut by David Anthony Durham. In this incarnation, the wayward youth is a 15-year-old African-American...

Gangland is Carcaterra country

Tue, 30 Jan 2001 11:17:16 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell - Gangland -- or at least its literary environs -- hasn’t been the same since the late Mario Puzo’s "The Godfather" pumped a little ba-da-bing into the phrase "family saga."

Lorenzo Carcaterra‘s "Gangster" is a rich tale about the rise of an...

Archived Web Services Reviews: RosesDirect.com: Too much manure, not enough service

Fri, 5 Jan 2001 20:04:18 GMT

rating: 1/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell - Looking to send roses to a special someone and want the convenience of online ordering? Use a traditional online florist, such as FTD or Flowers.com, because RosesDirect.com provides poor service and poor delivery. When it absolutely positively has to be...

Paradise frozen

Thu, 2 Nov 2000 16:21:54 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell - Paradise isn't lost in Claire Davis's debut novel, "Winter Range" -- but it's damn cold and likely a good day's ride east of Eden, Montana.

Her setting is a frozen Hell in the New West, "a vast, ice-locked landscape"...

Henley Patricia: Worship of Common Heart: Women we all know

Tue, 17 Oct 2000 13:56:01 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell - In her debut novel, "Hummingbird House," Patricia Henley explored a flawed woman's humanity and how the choices she made echo throughout her life.

Now in "Worship of the Common Heart," a new collection of 19 earthy stories...

A road map to Larry McMurtry's heart

Thu, 28 Sep 2000 15:40:14 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell - It's been said that the Interstate Highway System finally made it possible to travel from one coast of America to the other without seeing anything.

But "Roads," Larry McMurtry's new collection of essays, part Jack Kerouac, part...

The pure poetry of violence

Mon, 21 Aug 2000 19:42:40 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell - James Carlos Blake, the descendant of an American pirate in the Caribbean, once said he wanted to write the most violent book in American literature.

In "Wildwood Boys," he might have succeeded. But the savage narrative isn't driven...

Jack London's dream in ruins

Mon, 21 Aug 2000 15:41:29 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell - "My first idea about a house is that it should be built to live in. ... It will be a usable house and a beautiful house, wherein the aesthetic guest can find comfort for his eyes as well as for his body. It will be a happy house — or else I'll burn...

Journeys in the heart

Tue, 25 Jul 2000 17:59:33 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell -

The state in the title of Barry Gifford's "Wyoming" is not the Cowboy State, but a state of mind. To the mother and son traveling together by car in the 1950s -- not on one trip but a series of trips over several years -- Wyoming...

Big Hole: Crossroads of Western history

Wed, 19 Jul 2000 15:29:39 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell - *"Sagebrush was strong, and the air swelled with its smell and the scent of pine. Then the wild, musky odor of bighorn sheep swept over the hillside. It came rolling down, like an avalanche. The sky was cloudless. To the north, the peaks of the...

I say, old chap, quit your whining!

Sat, 8 Jul 2000 18:35:46 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell - After centuries of imperialism, both benevolent and despotic, England is sniffing about recent portrayals of Brits in Hollywood. The offending movie of the week: The Patriot.

Many Brits are especially angry with "Patriot" star, Mel...

Capturing the poetic puzzle of the West

Sat, 8 Jul 2000 15:19:45 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell - If Wyoming poet James Galvin's "Fencing the Sky" were the last Western novel ever written, the genre would have come full circle: A melodrama in which violence is righteous if committed in the name of protecting the good folks who scratch out a...

Hayesville Opera House: A high note in history

Thu, 6 Jul 2000 18:24:15 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell - Perhaps it was just another show along the road. The player had already left his mark on the world, both as a showman and an adventurer, and he had many magnificent shows still ahead in his life. Only a year before, he had taken a grander stage to play...

Healy, Dermot: Bend For Home: The haze of Irish memory

Mon, 26 Jun 2000 13:34:28 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell - In this bittersweet memoir about growing up and growing old, Dermot Healy explores the quality of memory, of tales told and heard and told again, of times half-remembered. Highly stylistic prose reflects the stream of human consciousness, where sometimes...

Mountain City: Place interrupted

Sat, 24 Jun 2000 14:06:19 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell - Most of the interior West is a space to be crossed, an unforgiving swath of rugged mountains and empty plains on the way to somewhere else. The final destination isn't always geographical, but is often a state of mind, of self-worth or of sheer will. And...

From the Old West to Ye Olde World

Sat, 24 Jun 2000 12:51:36 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell - I recently flew British Airways (and commuting partner Aer Lingus) to Ireland from Phoenix, Arizona. The non-stop flight to London was long, more than 12 grueling hours, with a short hop to Dublin soon after. But British Airways has the trans-Atlantic...

A book you should read about Wyoming

Fri, 23 Jun 2000 13:13:45 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell - Some nights in Wyoming, when the sky is like busted crystal and the twilight wind has dispersed the barbed-wire scent of sage oil to God-knows-where, some folks can smell the rain coming. Not all folks, just ones whose primal senses and recent memories...

Jackalope Pottery: Not your father's terra cotta

Fri, 23 Jun 2000 12:40:33 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author RonFranscell - You want some good pot? There's really only one place to get it: Jackalope Pottery in Santa Fe.

You can wander a few acres of pottery, crafts, foods, jewelry, furniture, sculpture, native foods, imported stuff of all kinds, sort of like Epcot...