Steve’s Selections #10 – The Orphanage (2007)

We have come to the tenth of twelve movie selections Steve Honeywell at 1001plus has made for me.  This one is The Orphanage, one of two horror films he included.  Over the years we have known each other it has been clear that Steve likes the horror genre quite a bit more than I do.  I was a little worried about having not one, but two horror films among the twelve he picked.  However, Steve also knows that I prefer suspense over gore and story over cheap scares, so he did a good job with the first one I watched – The Changeling (1980) – and as it turns out, an even better job with The Orphanage.  This is much more than “just a horror movie.”  It has a great story with a central mystery, but also has a lot of compassion for the characters in it. 

Book – Driving Heat

Note: This is part of my ongoing reviews of the Castle television show’s seasons, the books written by “Richard Castle”, and some events related to the show.  For the parent post with links to all of these, please click here.

Driving Heat is the seventh Nikki Heat book by “Richard Castle”, the fictional writer on the TV show Castle.  The actual author of these books is speculated to be one of the real authors who have appeared on the show (i.e. Michael Connelly, James Patterson) or one of the show’s creators (i.e. Andrew Marlowe).  Like the first six books, this one has events or plot points similar to things that have happened on the Castle TV show in the prior season.  However, this book may be the most standalone one yet.

September Movie Status

After the last month and a half of not really watching movies I got back into it in September.  I saw 68 new films, plus re-watched Season 7 of the TV show Castle.

I refocused on the Empire Top 500 Movies list and completed that during the month.  I also discovered that even though I had completed the original Entertainment Weekly Top 100 Films list from 1999 they had published a new one in 2013.  It was quite a bit different, but as it turns out there was only one film on it that I had not yet seen, so I took care of that this month, too.

With the Empire list done I didn’t have a strong feeling for what I should work on next.  I did have an unsatisfied feeling of having left some lists undone when I put them on hold to concentrate on the TSPDT list last year.  Those were the list of all Oscar Best Picture nominees, as well as the six genre specific lists of 101 Movies You Must See Before You Die, which were put out by the same folks that did the 1001 Movies books.