My Two Blessings

  April Reading Wrap Up Read nine  books this month of which three were physical and the rest eBooks which meant slow progress with clearing my shelves.  The longest was David Brin's Earth at 704 pages and the shortest was Trisha Das's Never Meant to stay at 280 pages.   I discovered reading science fiction / fantasy in physical book format at bedtime for some weird reason gives my brain something to think about and puts me to sleep.  My bedtime read was David Brin's science fiction adventure - Earth - which I had read way back when it first came out so didn't remember much at all. Environmental scientific experimentation, an artificial black hole in the center of the earth caused by aliens, and all about survival.  (704) **** Next I jumped into Christopher Paolini's 5th book in the Inheritance Cycle - Murtagh: Murtagh and his dragon /thorn are outcast, or so it seems, and jump from one fire into another in their adventures searching for a murderous ...

  Welcome back, good movie lovers. And today, we're looking at Chicken Run's sequel DAWN OF THE NUGGET, which you can view on Netflix, and dropped in December of 2023. So what is this film all about, especially after the first film was basically a parody of prison breakout/World War II POW camp escape films? DAWN OF THE NUGGET is a spy genre parody, and it takes place in the 1960s, within the decade after the first movie. So let's get into the plot of this film, and I'll keep it as brief as possible. Following their escape from Tweedy's farm in the first movie, Ginger and her crew have settled on a small island, and she's hooked up with Rocky. They have a baby named Molly, who decides to leave the island and explores the outside world, only to be captured and taken to a high-tech farm with mind-controlled chickens. Ginger and her group set off on a mission to rescue Molly along with the other chickens, and after infiltrating the facility, Ginger learns that the ...

  Hi, guys. Near the end of last year, Dreamworks released CHICKEN RUN: DAWN OF THE NUGGET, the sequel to 2000's CHICKEN RUN, on Netflix. Now, before reviewing the sequel, let's take a look at the first movie. First, some background. Dreamworks is the studio behind many hits such as WALLACE & GROMIT and, of course, SHREK. Oh, let's not forget SHARK TALE. However, those aren't the ONLY films they're known for, and this is where CHICKEN RUN comes in. The movie is basically THE GREAT ESCAPE, but with chickens... and a rooster. Yep, it's a parody of 1963's World War II epic, but instead of soldiers and pilots trying to escape a Nazi camp during World War II, it's British chickens, a few rats, and an American rooster escaping a farm run by greedy tunnel-visioned woman and her kinda observant farmer husband. The wonderful Mel Brooks voices the character of Rocky Rhodes, the rooster, and Mrs. Tweedy, the main villain, is voiced by Miranda Richardson, who re...

  History can never forget the Second World War, the events that led to it, those who started it, the heroes of the war, and what ended the chaotic carnage.  In the decades since Germany and Japan's respective surrender, there have been films set during the war that told historical or fictional stories about many events involving the Allied heroes of World War II. In 1963, the world saw the release of THE GREAT ESCAPE, starring the legendary Steve McQueen, which told the story of a daring historical escape by Allied POWs and went on to inspire films such as Dreamworks' CHICKEN RUN (2000). The film is set in 1943, almost four years into the war, and sees a group of Allied prisoners, who are known for escaping German POW camps, moved to Luft Stalag III, run by a Luftwaffe Colonel named Von Luger, actually a stand-in for Stalag III's real commandant Fredrich Willhelm von Lindeiner-Wildau, who tells British Group Captain Ramsey not to make any attempts to escape, even though th...

  March passed way too quickly. I read ten books this month with Mark Helprin's In Sunlight and In Shadow the longest at 705 pages and Charles De Lint's The Mystery of Grace the shortest at 269 pages.  I made progress reading my physical shelves with only one being an ebook.  Our 52 books author of the month was Rebecca Yarros and I dove into what I consider a five star read of the Empryean series.    I really enjoyed the first two book and now have to wait until the beginning of next year for the third book. Which is fine since I get to read it all over again.  Fourth Wing (498 pages) is a fantasy romance with dragons and gut wrenching bad good guys and bad guys. The cadets have to master a parapet to join or fall to their deaths.  Each challenge becomes a matter of life or death, no inbetween.  In Iron Flame , (640 pages) the cadets to go war and have to deal with deception and challenges and the story is full of twists and turns. ...