WATCHING:
The Lovely Bones
Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Stanley Tucci

This movie, based on the book by the same name by Alice Seybold, begins as the book does, with narration by the protagonist: “My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.”

Whoa – we’re in for a feel-good movie!

I have not (yet) read the book, but I knew the subject matter and was a little hesitant to pick it up, but whatever. Give it a shot.

I thought it was great. It’s an almost non-linear book, and one told from two points of view: From her perch in (almost) heaven, and from those she has left behind (family, friends and her killer).

Susan Sarandon, who plays Susie’s grandmother, gives a great performance in very little screen time. That said, I didn’t quite get the anguish of her father – Wahlberg – from his performance that reflected his character’s intensity/anguish as Susie’s narration outlined. He was OK, but nothing great.

Tucci, playing a pedophile, was his usual brilliant. Pedophile, hit man (The Pelican Brief), gay fashion designer (The Devil Wears Prada), statesman and solid husband (Julie and Julia) – this guy can act!

It’ll be interesting to see how it compares to the book – the movie, directed by Peter Jackson, has a lot of Lord of the Rings type fantasy sequences. I’m guessing fans of the book will say Jackson went with CGI at the expense of more character interaction – which, who knows, might be true – but the 2-hour+ movie was very satisfying to me, despite the distasteful subject matter.

And the girl – she is only 18 years old this year – who played Susie (Saoirse Ronan) was great. Very believable and vulnerable yet – at the same time – strong and wise beyond her years.

Glad I picked it up.

All movies

The web is, of course, a very fluid arena.

I’ve noticed recently some shifts in sites that I hit – some more, some falling off my radar. Here are some examples, in no particular order:

Reading more often:

• Readwriteweb.com – Once Flipboard became available for the iPhone, I installed it immediately. One of the media channels was readwriteweb, and this just reminded me about how I’d forgotten to remember to follow this site. Got that? Good stuff for techies.
• Pandodaily.com – Yeah, dumb name (but for a good reason…). Basically made of a lot of writers who bailed from Techcrunch.com after all the AOL/HuffPo fiascos. A daily must-read.
• Forbes.com – To be honest, I read this more on Flipboard than on the web, but a good source of tech and business news, usually very well-written and well-sourced.
• ParisLemon.com – The mad ramblings of Apple fanboy MG Siegler.

Reading less often:

• Techcrunch – As noted above, PandoDaily.com has filled that void. I only hit Techcrunch a couple of times a week vs. a few times a day in the past. Sad.
• Huffington Post – This site, while loading up a lot of fresh news daily, has a lot of crap. Fashion, headlines that belong on the National Enquirer, not a legit news site. Again, kind of sad.
• Kottke.org – Jason Kottke is, to me, the ultimate abstractor of the internet. Much like magazines devoted to providing small abstracts of large scientific articles – so you could scan or elect to read the entire report – Kottke finds what’s interesting on the web and points to same with a small excerpt or description. Useful. Yet a few years ago he (I applaud him) married well, has traveled, and really doesn’t need to blog as much. So he doesn’t. So I don’t go there that often. Still often find good stuff I would never have seen had I not gone there, so keep it up Jason.
• scripting.com – Dave Winer, the/one of the original bloggers, keeps writing, but I find – for whatever reason – less of it interesting. It might just be me. So I’ll go there occasionally to catch up, but it’s no longer a daily visit, more like once a week or so.

These are just a few, off the top of my head. Some of the changes have to do with changes to the sites; others are due to changes in me – my interests/priorities have shifted. As has my reading…