be the story

Spotlight: The Notebook (the movie) (Review)

Review of The Notebook, directed by Nick Cassavetes, based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks.

An elderly woman (Gena Rowlands) stands, looking out of the nursing home window. An elderly man (James Garner) visits her. She doesn’t know him, but he clearly considers her an old friend. He reads to her a story from a small notebook, a story about young Noah (Ryan Gosling) and his one true love Allie (Rachel McAdams). They fell madly in love one summer. But she comes from a rich family, and her mother doesn’t want her marrying below her class. Allie gets not even one of Noah’s letters. She falls in love with and gets engaged to a handsome busnessman, with her parents’ full support.

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Spotlight: Holly Lisle’s Website

Do you love good writing? Do you want to learn to write? Check out fantasy author Holly Lisle’s website.

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Spotlight: Smilla’s Sense of Snow (the movie) (Review)

A review of Smilla’s Sense of Snow, the movie.

I first encountered this underappreciated sci-fi mystery flick when Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave it two thumbs up in 1997. Smilla’s Sense of Snow stars Julia Ormond and Gabriel Byrne and is based on the novel by Peter Høeg of the same name. And of course, now we can see it on DVD.

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Spotlight: A Certain Slant of Light (Review)

“Someone was looking at me, a disturbing sensation if you’re dead.”

If I tried really hard, I might be able to find something wrong with this story. But why would I want to work that hard? After just finishing A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb, already I want to start over again from the beginning. So seldom do I run across a story this well put together, I can’t help but gush a little. I even emailed Laura Whitcomb to tell her how much I enjoyed it.

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Spotlight: Walk Two Moons (Review)

A review of Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech.

When I first read the first chapter of Walk Two Moons, the Newbery Medal award-winning juvenile novel by Sharon Creech, I didn’t quite realize what I was getting into. You can read it yourself, preview the first chapter at Amazon.com. Now after having read the whole book, reading these first few pages makes me tear up a little.

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Spotlight: Because of Winn-Dixie (Review)

A review of Because of Winn-Dixie, the film directed by Wayne Wang, based on the novel by Kate DiCamillo.

This is a touching portrait of a little girl’s heart. It’s a film I rented and watched, and then felt I had to watch again. And then I felt like I needed my own copy of the DVD, and like I needed to get a copy of the novel, too.

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Spotlight: Ender’s Game (Review)

A review of Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card.

Andrew Wiggin prefers to be called Ender. He’s a six-year-old genius destined to save the world. He’s also a Third, that is the third child in a world in which it’s against the law to have more than two. The government made an exception with Ender, because he’s going to become the General who will win Earth’s war with an alien race called the Buggers. Why Ender is the one quickly becomes obvious. Yes, he’s only a little boy, but Ender thinks and acts like a great leader. And that’s why he leaves his family for battle school, to become a great military leader. But the challenges he faces in military school are more than even Ender expected, and yet he faces them with both dignity and cunning.

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Spotlight: The Goat in the Grey Fedora (Review)

The Goat in the Grey Fedora
An on-line story game by Mark Darin, starring Jason Ellis, published by Pinhead Games.

Many of us expect little from adventure games. But the story game is not dead, no siree. In fact, it’s coming back to life. Just as bloggers and podcasters and videobloggers are ushering in a new era of media, on-line game publishers are ushering in a new era of story gaming.

If we expect little from adventure games, we expect even less from free games. But we should not settle. And the second episode in the Nick Bounty series by Pinhead Games neither asks us to settle nor disappoints.

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Spotlight: City Lights (Review)

For Valentine’s week, I’m looking at one of the best loved romantic movies of all time. No, not Casablanca, though that is one of the best loved romantic movies of all time. Go back about another decade, to 1931, to the time of Charlie Chaplin. His films enraptured me as a boy. Even today, as I watched City Lights with my family, it mesmerized my daughters, seeing it for the first time. And all the good feelings came back to me, classic scene after classic scene, the classic soundtrack sounding half from the TV, half in my memory. The comedy still makes me laugh, and the drama still moves me.

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Spotlight: Heartbeat (Review)

Heartbeat is perhaps not what you would expect me to read. That’s because it’s intended for a different audience, girls aged 9-12. My daughter put me on to this book. She needed to do a book report, and her teacher put her on to it. What she liked in particular was the format: 180 pages of free verse, about 10,000 words.

But what author Sharon Creech does with those 10,000 words! (Read more…)