Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Home Alone 2. Feature film. (1992, 120 mins) IMDB

...sequels never live up to the first--here's an example...

umb for the holiday. Dumb for the masses.

A predictable sequel with a great number of slow, boring sequences. The best sequence happens when the little bugger lures the two criminals into a brownstone under renovation. He's set all sorts of traps and the result is pratfalls and sight gags that are amusing. That was the movie for me--one reel. The rest is entirely forgettable and lame.

Consider this scene. The little bugger is in Central Park where he becomes friendly with the pigeon lady. She appears to be an ogre and doesn't talk to anyone. He manages to get her to talk, to open up and explain her heart was broken and she doesn't want to go through that again. We then get to hear him give her life advice which she buys into it without hesitation. Please. How pathetic. How simplistic. How terrible.

If you've seen the first one you don't need to see the second. Not even for children.

Posted 2009/05/14 at 19h56ET in Movie Commentary.

Comments

Please, Please, Please, No More

Saturday, October 8, 2011 ... what is the best way to start your novel ... C ount them. One. Two. I downloaded two thriller e-books from amazon.com, both published by the author, and they both started the same way: the character waking up and going about some morning ritual. Both books were in the top 100 bestsellers of Mystery & Thrillers Fiction. Both had many positive reviews. Those facts seemed encouraging, but once I read the opening scene, I stopped. I did not continue. But James that seems harsh? Perhaps, yes, but the writer is sending a signal with such an opening. It says, I have more to learn about writing thrillers for today’s audience. Why do I say that? Because a waking-up scene is mundane. It’s ordinary. It happens to us everyday. We don’t read thrillers for the mundane and ordinary. We read them for the extraordinary. We read them to live vicariously through the characters. We read them to be entertained. There is nothing in those waking-up scenes th...

Analysis of Amazon E-book Fiction Bestsellers (Week #1)

Sunday, October 30, 2011 ... trying to make sense of the amazon bestsellers and pricing for e-books ... E ach hour Amazon updates its bestsellers lists. I have taken a daily snapshot of the top 20 bestsellers in the e-book fiction list for the past week. See here . What can be learnt from these data? 1. 4 out 5 of the bestsellers are from print or traditional authors. Most are brand-named authors who dominate the print bestsellers. 2. Almost all of the authors have multiple titles to their credit. The author of The Help is a notable exception. 3. The e-book prices of indie authors are substantially lower than print authors. For the most part, their titles are priced at $0.99. 4. The books on the list fall into four categories: (i) pre-release from brand-named authors, (ii) new or recently released titles (iii) long-term bestsellers (greater than one year), (iv) backlist titles. Indie authors fall into (ii) and (iv). 5. The indie authors includes authors who ...

Checked Off

Sunday, April 11, 2010 ... one To Do is off the list ... I recently completed a task that was completely irrational. It was a fixture on my To-Do list because I always put it off. This week I decided to change that. I dug through my files of sketches and drawings and scanned them into my computer. A simple concept, sure, but tedious and time consuming. I suggest wearing latex gloves or buying hand lotion, but maybe that's a personal choice...Anyway, I now have a folder with 1.2 GBs of JPEG and PSD files. Here's an example from 1992. Right, where's that To-Do list? I want to sketch a line on it. Posted 2010/04/11 at 13h54ET in JamesPiper.com.

James Piper, Author

Search This Blog