MOVIE: Wallace & Gromit – The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)

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Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-RabbitYear: 2005Rating: GLength: 85 minutes / 1.42 hours Having grown up with the Wallace & Gromit short films, I've always held the belief that this duo is the core to Aardman Animations' success. For their first outing in a feature-length context, there was bound to be some growing pains with the transition from short films. Granted, this wasn't Aardman's first foray into feature-length stop motion films, but there were a lot of expectations riding on this film based on how well the previous Wallace & Gromit shorts had done. With the leap into a feature-length movie, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) pulled out all the stops for its visuals. The whole thing looks great, even if it's clear in spots that there were computers being used instead of just the raw physical medium of Plasticine. As always, Gromit is the most expressive silent character of this century (and I'd even say...
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BOOK: Bone, Vol. 1 – Out from Boneville (2005)

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Bone, Vol. 1: Out from Boneville Year: 2005 Author: Jeff Smith Length: 138 pages Bone is one of those comics I’ve always been aware of but haven’t gotten around to reading until now. It’s interesting how the visual style of the titular characters evokes an older style of comics, while the other characters in the world feel more modern. The storytelling runs at a pretty fast pace that kept me turning the pages to see what happens next. There’s some pretty good humor here, as well as tense situations to keep it from becoming too silly. I can definitely see the appeal and why it’s been a notable comic since its origins in the early 1990s. My only qualm with this book has to do with the main characters. The three “Bones” feel out of place in the fantasy realm, let alone our world. It also took me a while to distinguish visually between Fone Bone and Phoney Bone, which was only aided because this...
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BOOK: Shadow of the Giant (2005)

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Shadow of the GiantYear: 2005Author: Orson Scott CardLength: 746 minutes / 12.43 hours I'm glad Ender Wiggin's crewmates had this side series to explore their identities. While most of these characters were in the background of the Shadow series until now, Shadow of the Giant finally gives them time to shine on their own. After all, after three books focusing on Bean, it's nice to see the geopolitical drama unfold between these young tactical geniuses. I can definitely appreciate the storytelling that fills in the gaps between Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead. With Achilles being killed off in the previous book, Shadow Puppets, the principal antagonist of the series left a vacuum on the world stage that was inevitably going to be filled by Ender's Jeesh. And while these individuals had aged to the point of young adulthood, I can't deny the clever game they played with entire nations so they could position themselves in stations of power. It's entertaining...
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VIDEO GAME: The Minish Cap (2005)

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The Legend of Zelda: The Minish CapYear: 2005Rating: ETime Played: ~16 hours The almost forgotten title in the Zelda franchise, Minish Cap has a subtle nod to its portable system in the way that Link can shrink down to engage with the world on a smaller scale. It’s a shame we didn’t see more unique titles in the Zelda series for the Game Boy Advance, as Minish Cap was a charming adventure that added to the developing lore of the franchise. While the visuals and controls were quite good considering the Game Boy Advance’s limitations, the length of this game left me wanting more by the time I completed it. As a unique entry in the portable Zelda games, Minish Cap has a surprising amount of depth regarding the characters, plot, and overall game mechanics. Each step in restoring the Minish sword revealed a little more about the lore, which caused me to keep playing to find out what would happen next....
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BOOK: Infernal Devices (2005)

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Infernal DevicesYear: 2005Author: Philip ReeveLength: 607 minutes / 10.12 hours Wow. OK. Maybe this series isn’t for children as much as I thought it was. Sure, a post-apocalyptic world has many subjects that can be considered dark—death being the main one—but Infernal Devices certainly went all in here and pushed the ugliness of humanity to the forefront of the plot. Of course, one wonders if the POV change to focus on the progeny of the two characters who comprised the first two books is part of why the tone of this book changed so drastically. Sure, there was violence in the previous two books; it just didn’t seem so gratuitous then. Aside from all the killing, which I suppose was meant to signify Hester’s character development, there wasn’t too much new in terms of world-building in this book. I appreciated all the developments in Mortal Engines and Predator’s Gold, but the addition of the African and Middle Eastern cities didn’t expound the...
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MOVIE: V for Vendetta (2005)

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V for Vendetta Year: 2005 Rating: R Length: 132 minutes / 2.20 hours It's a little weird watching a dystopian movie like V for Vendetta (2005) in 2020. I watched this film each year around the 5th of November, but life eventually got in the way and made it difficult to continue the tradition. At the time, I enjoyed the "underdog" of V (Hugo Weaving) protecting art and freedom of thought from the tyranny of an oppressive government. Having gone back and re-watched it in the current global climate, I'm honestly shocked at how prescient it was in predicting a lot of our future. Hopefully, things don't become worse to the point of completely fulfilling this prophecy. I think part of the reason this film remains timeless—other than the flawless performances of Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving—is how it shows the amount of freedom people in society give up in the name of "safety." Fear-mongering is a common political tactic to get individuals to vote...
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BOOK: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005)

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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Year: 2005 Author: Stieg Larsson Length: 980 minutes / 16.33 hours For many years, I was hesitant to read this book, mostly due to a few intense sequences that I saw in the David Fincher film adaptation. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be subjected to them in book form any more than I had been already. Fortunately, these scenes were quite a bit more tolerable in the book, mostly because the descriptions weren’t nearly as visceral as watching them on the big screen. I’m only now kicking myself for waiting this long to read such a fantastic book. While the book and the movie diverge in a few spots, I can see the reasoning behind the differences. When it comes right down to it, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a showcase for its titular character. Lisbeth Salander is tough, smart, and an overall entertaining individual to follow. While it takes quite a while for her to...
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BOOK: Monster (2005)

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Monster Year: 2005 Author: Frank Peretti Length: 679 minutes / 11.32 hours One of the challenges of the Christian author is being able to craft stories and characters that share their beliefs, but without being too heavy-handed about it. In Frank Peretti’s Monster, the author mostly succeeds, providing characters that can easily be identified as Christian, but also exhibiting the traits of normal humans instead of straight-up caricatures. The main plot of this book was only tangentially related to an argument against evolution, so that was also a plus. Still, the way the book was put together, it was clear where the author’s bias was. While some people might not appreciate the Christian undertones in this thriller, my qualms with it are more structural. Following a few different characters after a woman is abducted by an unnatural beast, the mystery of the disappearances and killings unravels to reveal a semi-plausible explanation. Unfortunately, the man and wife pair that are introduced at the start of the...
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BOOK: How to Survive a Robot Uprising (2005)

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How to Survive a Robot Uprising Year: 2005 Author: Daniel H. Wilson Length: 186 minutes / 3.1 hours As a precursor to Robopocalypse, How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion takes a humorous approach to educating the reader about the capabilities and limitations of today’s robots. Similar in style to Where’s My Jetpack?: A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future That Never Arrived, How to Survive a Robot Uprising uses the humor of preparing for the end of the world to poke fun at the limited possibility that we’d eventually be destroyed by the robots we use to make our lives comfortable today. With my background in robotics (my Master’s Degree was in Mechanical Engineering with a focus on Robotics and Design), I quickly realized how Daniel H. Wilson was writing this “guide.” Robots are powerful and useful machines, many of which can perform actions much more efficiently and accurately than humans can, thus leading to our swift and inexorable demise. However, by...
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BOOK: The Lincoln Lawyer (2005)

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The Lincoln Lawyer Year: 2005 Author: Michael Connelly Length: 696 minutes / 11.6 hours While I saw the movie before listening to the audiobook, I must say that I still really enjoy the main character. He's one of those guys you love to hate, but he's trying so hard to do the right thing, even if it means defending a scumbag who deserves a lot worse. Of course, since I had seen the movie already, I had an idea how it was going to end, but couldn’t remember the specifics. Perhaps that’s a measure of a great crime drama: all the misdirection makes it difficult to know “whodunit”, allowing future rereads to be enjoyable. But, back to the main character, Mickey Haller, I think one of the reasons this book was a breeze to listen to was because the main character’s POV is so well written. You can tell that he has some baggage from his father, which is partly why he defends everyone, regardless...
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