Paul’s Book & DVD Reviews: Three Stinkers

• Now as their objective stood before them it became obvious that unlike the others towns and cities they had sacked, this one would not fall without a long and lengthy campaign.
• “You ain’t gonna believe this,” he answered in a Georgia accent, “but the last dropwindsonde profiling system I released recorded horizontal wind speeds of up to two hundred and twenty miles an hour as it fell through the storm toward the sea.”
• Exotically designed minibuses with luxurious interiors and painted lavender pulled up to the aircraft to accommodate the passengers.
• Seemingly adhered to the marble slab, he could not move nor turn his head.

Talk about phoning in your work . . . sweet baby Jesus! Best-selling author™ Clive Cussler has discovered he can insult readers and desecrate the English language with impunity, so long as he keeps making money for his publisher. Thank God I found this book in a hospital waiting room and didn’t actually pay for it.

This Ted Bell likes imagery: when cars accelerate, they fishtail. Always. Motorcycles, boats, airplanes too. All vehicles must fishtail! Thank goodness he didn’t work the Orient Express into the story.

Fans of Lou Dobbs will love the plot: dirty brown latinos invade the USA to reconquer territory lost in the Mexican-American War, egged on by dirtier browner terrorist half-breed muslins. Chickenhawks will love the military techno-babble, especially since the author, like them, clearly knows nothing about weapons or warfare. This Ted Bell? You can have him.

Yeah, so? All musicals are frivolous, fakey, and unreal, yet there are many I love. Cabaret was shockingly good. The 2005 version of The Producers made me laugh so hard I nearly pissed myself. The Sound of Music, as much fun as we all make of it, is a damn fine movie musical. What is it about Mamma Mia that riles me so?

I think I hate Mamma Mia because it’s such a transparently cynical attempt to exploit and cash in on what TV and Hollywood producers call the “female demographic,” the same audience pandered to by morning news & entertainment shows, The View, Oprah & Doctor Phil, and Access Hollywood. If, somewhere in the middle of Mamma Mia, the producers had inserted a 20-minute Swiffer infomercial, probably no one would have noticed. Meryl, how could you? Where’s your pride?

Mamma Mia isn’t just a chick flick, it’s the chicks’ revenge on the guys who drug them to the multiplex to see Transformers.  Okay, we’re even now.  Can we for God’s sake quit forcing frivolous, fakey, and unreal movies on each other now?