Epinions Recent Reviews for lorenmgreen

Grimus: Rushdie's First

Fri, 22 May 2009 13:53:04 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - Everybody starts somewhere. When it comes to the arts, first releases tend toward one of two things: lackluster, with the artist still finding his/her identity, or groundbreaking. Considering that I'd never heard of Grimus before...

Gainesville Days Inn: Maintainence Not Included

Thu, 7 May 2009 16:41:27 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - For the past two years, and hopefully several to come, I’ve found myself in Gainesville for a music festival. On my second trip, with a firmer grip on the layout of the town and what my expenses would be, I chose the university Days Inn near...

Robert Duvall in Tomorrow

Wed, 6 May 2009 16:10:31 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - Tomorrow, starring Robert Duvall and Olga Bellin, is based on a Faulkner short story. It’s in a rural southern setting in the 1930s. The movie starts out with a gunfight and subsequent courtroom scene, leading us to Duvall in the...

Poverty, Horror, Love: Slumdog Millionaire

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:58:36 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - Amid all the hype and awards it’s easy to get pulled in by the momentum. On first glance at the trailers, Slumdog Millionaire looked like some kind of feelgood movie. As the press machine got going, I learned that Danny Boyle...

EM Forster's Howard's End

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:34:27 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - Scene: England. 1910. London is encroaching on rural lands and the cosmopolitan-rural divide continues to blur. England is a country at a crossroads. The protagonists: the highly cultured, upper class Schlegel orphans, who have...

Richard Wright's Native Son

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:56:47 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - First published in 1940, Native Son is Richard Wright’s most famous work—and it’s by far his most distressing that I have read. In short, the novel tells the story of Bigger Thomas in three parts. Bigger is a...

Meatballs: Bill Murray's First Leading Role

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:12:21 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - Maybe my memory is slipping with old age. I remembered Meatballs as a teen sex romp, full of dirty humor and crazy teenaged antics. Apparently, 1979 was a different time as either the movie was not a teen sex flick, or the MPAA’s...

Batman Returns in The Dark Knight

Fri, 5 Dec 2008 14:52:11 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - I should put forth the disclaimer right away: I thought Batman Begins was one of the worst movies I’d seen in a long time. It was stylistically pleasing, but the plot was beyond ridiculous. While it seemed to strive for realism,...

Charles Bronson in DEATH WISH

Thu, 9 Oct 2008 13:32:20 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - What would happen if you were a bleeding heart liberal, a conscientious observer whose family was raped and murdered Death Wish< i> posits that you'd go on a killing spree. Filmed in 1974 in New York, the city presented in the movie is one...

Frank Portman's King Dork

Tue, 7 Oct 2008 14:05:58 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - Frank Portman's first novel, King Dork< i> tells the story of the titular character, a socially-awkward high schooler in suburban California who is learning about life, family, love, sex, and friendship. Things you should know about King Dork, aka...

Steve Martin's Shop Girl Needs a [Sugar] Daddy

Wed, 28 May 2008 17:20:45 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - Shop Girl is the story of a twenty-eight year-old Vermont girl, trying to find her place by moving to Los Angeles and starting her own life across the country. She has emotional baggage from both her upbringing and via clinical depression. Add...

American Steel Return From Hiatus

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:19:10 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - After 6 years' hiatus, Bay Area band American Steel return with their fourth full-length album and first for Fat Wreck. Setting the tone is "Sons of Avarice." This is a mid-tempo song, based on a pop structure and melodic delivery. Immediately,...

Transformers: A Big Screen Adaption

Thu, 4 Oct 2007 13:42:33 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - Considering that I went to this movie expecting nothing, earning 3 stars is an accomplishment. In a world bent on adapting old ideas to new mediums, Transformers appears on the surface to be another failed attempt to turn an 80s cartoon into a 00s...

All The Sweet Stuff

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 14:19:57 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - All the Sweet Stuff is the San Francisco band Gravy Train!!!!’s fourth release and first on Cochon Records. This release continues in their style of trashy electropop, but, with production cameos from various San Francisco dance groups, the album has a...

Bad Brains Capitalize on Brand Name

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 14:13:37 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - Twenty-five years ago, Bad Brains were among the most important hardcore bands in the world. They inexplicably fused reggae with faster and more technical punk than their contemporaries. Over time, they changed styles, replaced and reintroduced...

Candy Girl: A Year In the Life on an Unlikely Stripper

Mon, 2 Jul 2007 15:09:30 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - Diablo Cody had recently relocated from Chicago to Minneapolis for an internet relationship. She was working in a career-type job for an advertising agency. She was climbing the ladder. She was unsatisfied. One day she passed the sign at the Skyway...

Diary: A [bland] Novel

Fri, 11 May 2007 12:53:43 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - Chuck Palahniuk seems to be best known for his novels Fight Club and Choke, the former also spawning a popular movie. I had not heard anything about Diary coming into reading it, and it was, in truth, my first Palahniuk novel...

Irvine Welsh's Filth

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 12:53:24 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - Your first impressions of Filth, by Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting) is a simple cover: a head shot of a sinister-looking pig donning a police hat. Beyond this head, is a solid blue background so that all you look at is the swine. This...

A Sensational Report on The Devil in the White City

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 14:16:37 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - In the 1890s as the United States was distinguishing itself throughout the world, the growing country also sought to prove itself within. The newer western portions of the country felt they had to prove their worth against that of the mighty New Yorks,...

Do You Really Think You're Happy? Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Cien Anos de Soledad (in English)

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 14:31:55 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - 100 Years of Solitude (1967) is a canonized work by Gabriel Garcia Marquez of Columbia. The work was originally composed in Spanish, although I am reviewing the English translation. The novel is often credited with originating, or at least...

I Don't Want You to Read The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess

Mon, 27 Mar 2006 15:40:16 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - "The other novel of the near future by the author of A Clockwork Orange." Or so says the cover of the printing of Anthony Burgess' 1962 sci-fi novel that I possess. The Wanting Seed is roughly a 200 page novel set in the future in a...

You Know You Want to Read Modern Fiction about the Norse Gods

Thu, 10 Feb 2005 19:36:14 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - The late Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, wrote another series of fiction as well:Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and this, its sequel, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.. Published in...

Percival Everett's Erasure

Mon, 7 Feb 2005 21:11:15 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - This book was in Borders' African-American literature section. I should note that author Percival Everett's primary theme in the novel is the classification of such a literary category itself. What specifically makes writing "African-American," he not...

Tender as Hellfire, by Joe Meno

Tue, 18 Jan 2005 00:16:05 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - Think about it: You’re a ten year-old kid, kind of tough but not to the point where your identity is defined by it. You live in Duluth with your Mom and her boyfriend. Your name is Dough. Your brother’s name is Pill. You move to a trailer...

Uncle Tom’s Children by Richard Wright

Mon, 22 Nov 2004 23:29:55 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author lorenmgreen - Uncle Tom’s Children is a collection of five short stories by the 1930s author Richard Wright. Wright is best known for the autobiographical Black Boy and the novel Native Son. Wright’s writing focuses heavily on race-issues of the...