Japanese Graphic Novel: Goodbye, Ari

 Goodbye Ari by Tatsuki Fujimoto, translation Amanda Haley, VIZ Media, San Francisco, 2022.

This book confused me at first until I was told back to front and right to left.  This is a subject of death and dying and grieving.  The main character's mother asks him to record her death as she is dying of cancer.  He makes a movie, but blows everything up at the end.  He couldn't face the death so made it a joke.  It was not well received.  He then tries again when his friend asks him to record her death.  He carries through this time.  He goes through life feeling something was wrong however; always tweaking his film.  He marries, has kids, but they all die in a car accident.  He then returns to where he and his friend hung out, and she is there.  She explains she is a vampire and just needs to regenerate from time to time.

The theme of dealing with loss is good, however the author was fixated on body functions which made this book flippant.  

Tom Hanks Movie Review: ***^ Here (2024)

 This is a non linear presentation of several different generations, all from the dining, living room of a house across from the William Franklin (son of Benjamin Franklin) estate.  Richard and Margaret (Tom Hanks and Robin Wright) are living in his father's home, which father gave to them in which to raise their daughter, Vanessa (Zsa Zsa Zemeckis).  Father moved to Florida after his wife had a stroke.  When she dies he moves back in with them.  The move shows scenes of the same area from the dinosaur age, to the original owners of the home, John and Pauline Harter (Gwylim Lee and Michelle Dockery) never make it big.  Paul likes planes, but dies in a flu epidemic.  One resident (David Flynn) of the home makes the first LaZ Boy chair.  After WWII, Al and Rose Young (Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly) but the home.  They raise three children, Richard, Elizabeth (Lauren McQueen) and Jimmy (Harry Marcus).  As noted it is Richard who stays in the home, much to the chagrin of Margaret who always wants to move to her own home.  However Margaret becomes pregnant early and Richard, who aspires to be an artist, instead sell insurance to provide for his family.  This creates a wedge and they eventually divorce but remain friends.  At the end of the show, Richard brings his wife to the home which he had sold some years before, and there helps her to remember the good times they had there as she has dementia.  She remembers a special incident with their daughter when she lost a blue ribbon and she found it for her.  

So what starts as a convoluted jumble becomes a remember your past with dementia movie like Lake House.

Bourne Movie Review: ****^ Bourne Legacy (2012)

 This movie is in the Bourne world, but is not about Jason Bourne.  Instead it is about another operative.  It coincides with Bourne ultimatum and talks about how the people high in government were cleaning up their mess with Treadstone and Blackbriar.  They were doing this by killing people involved with the program, including all of the enhanced agents like Bourne.  There are nine of them and in this case it is Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) who is running.  They also want to kill the lab team that has been working on the meds and viruses that gives them their powers.  They kill most of the agents by giving them poison instead of their regular pills.  Cross was on a mission, and able to evade the drone sent to kill he and another agent (Oscar Isaac).  It gets the other agent, but Dross avoids being blown up, and tricks the monitors when he puts his tracking device in the wolf.  

Dross also manages to save a lab scientist, Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz).  The rest of the lab people were killed.  He is able to deal with the team sent to Shearing's house to kill her.  A final lab enhanced person is sent to kill them.  Very intense chases and fight scenes.  Renner is fun as an enhanced agent.  We learn much more about the program and how it came to be. 

Disney Movie Review: ***** Bambi (1942)

 I can't say anything ad about Bambi.  It is sad when the mother is shot, and when Bambi is wounded.  "Man is in the forest," is the worse thing that could happen.  They bring guns and fire.  I love the rain storm music.  I also like the springtime which brings too much noise for Mr. Owl.  This movie takes its time because they want to show they beauty of nature, and the uniqueness of the animals.  This happens several times, in the spring, when Bambi is meating the community, and then again when the animals have babies of their own.  At 1942 this movie is much older than I am.  Disney use to rerelease movies before the age of VCR.  They would also show on television.  

Netflix Movie Review: Remarkably Bright Creatures

 This is an emotional life drama narrated by an octopus (Alfred Molina).  In the end two characters come together in an unexpected way.  Tova (Sally Field) lost her son when he was in high school due to a boat accident.  Cameron (Lewis Pullman) comes to town looking for his father.  He stays with a friend, Ethan Mack (Colm Meaney) of Tova's, living in his van.  He is hired at the local aquarium, where the octopus resides.  He is going to replace Tova as the janitor, who is thinking of crossing the bay and living in a senior home.  Cameron find the man he thought was his father, but he is not.  He has a girlfriend, Avery (Sofia Black D'alia).  But he blows it when he meets her son who is high school age.  

The octopus has to go to drastic measures to fix things, before he returns to the ocean to die.  

This movie is a current offer on aNetflix.  It is very likable.  The ending is very good.

Harrison Ford Movie Review: **^ Witness (1985)

 This movie is rated "R" and like most movies of this ilk left me with a bad feeling at the end.  Too much vioence and using the F word does that to me.  The actors do a good job, Harrison Ford as Book and Kelly McGillis as Rachel.  Rachel is a widow who travels through Philadelphia with her son.  Her son witnesses a murder at the train station.  At the police station he identifies a police officer from narcotics as the killer.  When Book reports this to his boss, that officer comes for Book.  Book flees with Rachel and the boy, Samuel (Lukas Haas) to Amish country, the home of her father (Jan Rubes) where he hides, and recovers from a bullet wound.  After recovering Bok gives himself away when he hits a local boy who was teasing the Amish.  Eventually the dirty police come for him, Schaeffer (Josef Sommer), McFee (Daniel Glover) and Fergie (Angus MacInnes).  

This movie is too violent, but it does show the contrast with the peaceful Amish community.  It is a. very good look inside the community which you don't see on a regular basis.  

Music Review: Karen Carpenter

 Karen Carpenter recorded a solo album while Richard was taking a year off for drug rehab from Quaaludes.  The music was recorded 1979-1980.  However it was not released.  The producers at A&M Records did not think they could release it.  Karen went along with the decision but was not happy with it.  Some of the songs on the record were rearranged by Richard and included in Carpenters music, but this was after Karen had passed away. The C.D. was not released as Karen wished until 1996, 13 years after her death.  It was first released in Japan, and then in the United States.  I peaked at number 19 in Japan.  The only known song is the Paul Simon song, "Still Crazy, After all these Years."  "Make Believe Its Your First Time" by Bob Morrison had previously been released in a Carpenter posthumous album, Voice of the Heart.

Karen Carpenter's voice is unique and it is always a pleasure to listen to her.