Jonathan Poritsky

The fol­low­ing short and sweet review comes from my account over at goodreads.com. If you’re a goodreads user, feel free to check in on my read­ing list and tell me what you think.

The Castle in the Forest: A Novel by Norman Mailer

rat­ing: 4 of 5 stars
This book it tough to swal­low as it human­izes one of the most vile peo­ple in his­tory, Adolf Hitler. However, once I allowed myself to get into the book, I saw the genius behind Mailer’s work. If we human­ize a man by see­ing him through the eyes of a devil, what does that say about us? Layers and ques­tions fill this book, mak­ing it more of a stim­u­lat­ing read than an infor­ma­tional one. Also, Mailer’s prose is incred­i­ble here. He is like a chameleon, enter­ing an older dialect for an older tale. I knew he was great, just didn’t real­ize he was so diverse. A mas­ter of let­ters! (excla­ma­tion points add to the book’s charm. check it out.

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The Shroud of the Thwacker by Chris Elliott

My review

rat­ing: 3 of 5 stars
I have to say I enjoyed this goofy lit­tle romp. Sure, it’s inane, but for some rea­son I couldn’t put it down. I think Chris Elliot is send­ing a mes­sage to us to not take our­selves so darn seri­ously. Message recieved loud a clear cabin boy.


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Catherine Hardwicke no doubt set out to make a gritty drama of teen angst set against the back­drop of the dreary Pacific Northwest, but a few weeks prior to shoot­ing, a pro­ducer must have handed her a script for “Twilight” and said make this instead. The first screen adap­ta­tion of Stephanie Meyer’s best­selling roman­tic vam­pire series is like a cheap wine look­ing for a bot­tle, which is really a shame because I would surely lap it up if only served prop­erly. Targeted at teenage girls, it would seem my age and gen­der pre­clude me from this dis­cus­sion, how­ever I believe that young women are yearn­ing for much more from their hero­ines, so let’s get started with the nit pick­i­ness. Read on…

It had to hap­pen some­time. As much as I had hoped to stave it off for as long as pos­si­ble, the day had to come when I would leave a Judd Apatow pro­duc­tion utterly dis­sat­is­fied. “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” nearly did me in, but fur­ther rumi­na­tion on the film showed a real mat­u­ra­tion hap­pen­ing in the cabal of dirty lit­tle boys that sur­round the Hollywood com­edy mag­nate. Too bad that the pro­gres­sion toward a bet­ter kind of toi­let humor didn’t make it’s way into the teams lat­est, and arguably most antic­i­pated, “Pineapple Express”.
Read on…

While I don’t usu­ally veer off from review­ing films or books, I fig­ured this new album would be worth my two pence since, after all, Coldplay makes some reli­ably cin­e­matic music.

I remem­ber 2000’s “Parachutes” album from the soon-to-be pop stars Coldplay. In one fell swoop those Brits invaded our shores and front­man Chris Martin stole many of our girl­friends with his ruggedi­zed nerdy white boy swag­ger. Damn them, I said as a high school sopho­more; they’re music is too girly. I’ll just sit over here and jam out to Lit or Blink 182 because I’m so cool. As quickly as the group became chic it became even more-so to hate on them.

But the truth is they’re amaz­ing, that album in par­tic­u­lar. Read on…