Over my vacation, I read a few books and watched a few movies, so here’s some quick thoughts on what I checked out.

Books

• Blood, Sweat and Pixels by Jason Schreier: A light, but overall entertaining look into the hardships of video game development.
• The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies by Ben Fritz: If you follow movies like I do, there were no major revelations in this book, but it uses details revealed in the Sony email hack of 2014 to help demonstrate how the world of running a movie studio has changed, and how the movie industry is striving to stay ahead of trends. The only real surprise news to me? Before giving Spider-Man back to Marvel, Sony tried to talk Sam Raimi into coming back to the franchise.
• The Outsider by Stephen King: I didn’t finish this yet - it’s quite lengthy, and according to my Kindle, I’m 48% in - but it’s quite the interesting pot-boiler which starts as almost King’s homage to Law & Order, quickly takes some strong twists and turns, and is starting to land perfectly into King’s warehouse of surreal horror. Great stuff!

Movies

• Skyscraper: Really dumb, but really fun. Rental at best though.
• Blockers: A surprisingly sweet, surprisingly progressive, yet hilariously filthy movie. Turns out John Cena is a great comedic actor.
• Ready Player One: Everything in the VR world was exciting and enjoyable. Everything in the real world was exposition heavy and dull. Made for an uneven movie.
• Rampage: Also really dumb. But less fun than Skyscraper, in terms of movies where Dwayne Johnson punches things.
• Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind: Great HBO documentary about the life of Robin Williams, re-told mostly through old interviews and archival footage. If you were a fan of the man, worth watching.

Book links go to Amazon, movies go to iTunes (where applicable).

Enjoy!