Bandersnatch (2018)

Rotten Tomatoes

Bandersnatch (2018): Interactive movie about a game designer going mad with belief his decisions are controlled by unseen forces (they are: by us). Clever gimmick but watching feels like following a flow chart for a script idea that needs a director to make choices. C-

POTD: Tee Pee Curios

From 2018 06 12 New Mexico

Today's photo-of-the-day is from Tucumcari, New Mexico, along historic Route 66, "The Main Street of America" and John Steinbeck's "Mother Road."

The Romanoffs (TV 2018)

Rotten Tomatoes

The Romanoffs (TV 2018): Uneven anthology about various descendants of Russian czars. The best episode, about a movie about Nicholas and his family, is like a Black Mirror episode. The worse, Matt Weiner's response to the #MeToo movement, is creepy. Original throughout. B-

POTD: Blue Swallow Motel

From 2018 06 12 New Mexico

Today's photo-of-the-day is from Tucumcari, New Mexico, along historic Route 66, "The Main Street of America" and John Steinbeck's "Mother Road."

POTD: Motel Safari

From 2018 06 12 New Mexico

Today's photo-of-the-day is from Tucumcari, New Mexico, along historic Route 66, "The Main Street of America" and John Steinbeck's "Mother Road."

POTD: Conoco

From 2018 06 12 New Mexico

Today's photo-of-the-day is from Tucumcari, New Mexico, along historic Route 66, "The Main Street of America" and John Steinbeck's "Mother Road."

POTD: Texaco

From 2018 06 12 New Mexico

Today's photo-of-the-day is from Tucumcari, New Mexico, along historic Route 66, "The Main Street of America" and John Steinbeck's "Mother Road."

Paddington 2 (2018)

Rotten Tomatoes

Paddington 2 (2018): Kids' movie with a rich enough plot to interest adults. Great family fare. 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Seamless blend of live action and CGI. Look for Sally Hawkins's scene that channels "Shape of Water." B-

POTD: Magnolia

From 2018 06 12 New Mexico

Today's photo-of-the-day is from Tucumcari, New Mexico, along historic Route 66, "The Main Street of America" and John Steinbeck's "Mother Road."

Review: The Luminaries

Amazon

From The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton:

The twelve men congregated in the smoking room of the Crown Hotel gave the impression of a party accidentally met. From the variety of their comportment and dress—frock coats, tailcoats, Norfolk jackets with buttons of horn, yellow moleskin, cambric, and twill—they might have been twelve strangers on a railway car, each bound for a separate quarter of a city that possessed fog and tides enough to divide them; indeed, the studied isolation of each man as he pored over his paper, or leaned forward to tap his ashes into the grate, or placed the splay of his hand upon the baize to take his shot at billiards, conspired to form the very type of bodily silence that occurs, late in the evening, on a public railway—deadened here not by the slur and clunk of the coaches, but by the fat clatter of the rain."

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Eleanor Catton has written a Victorian novel for the 21st century. Set during the New Zealand gold rush of the 1860s, it features a large cast of prospectors, bankers, politicians, con men, whores, and fortune tellers, all mixed up in a mystery of stolen gold and dead and missing men. It's ambitious and massive, but impossible to sort out.