Reviews

Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow

zmull's review against another edition

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2.0

Cory Doctorow is about as subtle as a brick to the face. Pirate Cinema is full of rail-thin characters who mostly exist to give/receive speeches from one another.

allysonbogie's review

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2.0

I really wanted to like this because I loved [a:Cory Doctorow|12581|Cory Doctorow|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1212526024p2/12581.jpg]'s novel [b:Little Brother|954674|Little Brother|Cory Doctorow|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1349673129s/954674.jpg|939584], but it just is disappointing. It's set in England in the future, and the main character gets his whole family kicked off the Internet for an entire year because he is caught pirating movies too many times. Pirating and remixing movies is not only illegal, but perpetrators are being targeted heavily. He regrets this and his family is extremely angry, so he runs away to London. The story is mainly set in London and deals with his survival and government oppression of hacker kids.

I only read half of this book because it's just not keeping my interest. I still don't know what the main conflict is going to be, which I could live with if the language and characters were compelling. Unfortunately, they're not. How do you mark on Goodreads that you've only read half of a book?

alboyer6's review

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3.0

I enjoyed this book. Tent (aka Cecil B. DeVil) loves to take clips from old movies and remake them into his own story but now it is a punishable criminal act. He's living on the streets of London helping set up Pirate Cinema and bring down the law that destroyed his world. Fun with great characters that you can't help but love.

aoosterwyk's review

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4.0

Cory Doctorow is my new favorite author. His blending of ethics, technology and art is winning. This book is unfortunately timely because of the recent death of Aaron Swartz and its link to bullying by big business and the judicial system's concerns about illegal downloading. The echoes between Pirate Cinema and the news was uncanny as I read.
Despite Doctorow's touchy and potentially depressing topics, he doesn't write morose stories. They are impossible to put down and super thought provoking.

singhalex's review

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1.0

boring

misterjay's review

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4.0

Is there a thirteen year old in your life? If there is, this is their Christmas present. Maybe their birthday. Maybe, just maybe, this is one of those books that you don't give to them at all. Maybe it's one you toss down on the sofa in angry disgust, while exclaiming, "I can't believe they publish this crap! It actually teaches kids how to think like pirates." Then maybe you walk away and make a sandwich or something and never quite get around to inquiring after the book.

Because this is the kind of subversive, radicalizing book that kids need. This is the kind of story that takes those bright, sometimes too-clever, kids and tells them it's ok to be weird and awkward and consumed with a passion no one around them seems to understand. This is the kind of book that tells them it's ok to love their parents even when they seem antiquated and weird, that it's ok to question authority, that it's ok to dislike the system. That it's ok to be who they actually are.

Cory Doctorow seems to have found the sweet spot in his writing. His juvenile books strike that rare and near-impossible balance of being a great story and yet still educational for the kids that read them. At the same time, Doctorow's young adult books are frustrating. They're so vivid and so grounded in a possible near future, that it's almost impossible to read them without becoming angry on the protagonists' behalf.

Doctorow captures teenage passion with rare skill. He takes adult readers back to their youth, when every decision seemed weighted with an all encompassing importance that grown-ups just couldn't understand. Every feeling, every experience is so overwhelming and so confusing, and, at the same time, every passing interest and fancy excites a passion that threatens to burn you down to ashes where you stand. And, in Doctorow's stories, you, the adult reader, remember these feelings and it is both embarrassing and gratifying to stand once again in the embers, even through such a vicarious medium.

Pirate Cinema is a lot of fun. Give it to a kid who needs it.

christajls's review

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This review originally posted at More Than Just Magic

In Pirate Cinema, Cory Doctorow addresses a lot of very real concerns, especially for today’s younger generation. Illegal downloading, internet monitoring, increasingly Orwellian laws being passed with little debate in government. I think a lot of readers will be sympathetic to the characters in this novel and their rebellion against the system. Doctorow goes into a lot of detail about how certain laws come into being and what their effect will be on society – not surprising since he himself is a vocal activist for similar causes in real life.

It’s not without it’s flaws however. At times I felt a little dragged down by the amount of legal and technical detail in the book. He didn’t always find that balance between informative and preachy. Also many of the characters were homeless and I found he depicted their life through rose coloured glasses. Other then a few occasional troubles, their life of the streets didn’t seem to bad – in fact it often seemed better then my own. They were a very colourful and charming bunch of characters, however, and given that it was based in London it had a very Charles Dickens feel to it (just much more cheery).

Pirate Cinema is a timely and informative and most of all important book. It’s not perfect by any means but if you can get past all the legal and political jargon I think you’ll feel better informed having read it.

micahhortonhallett's review

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3.0

Cory Doctorow offers up the cheeriest, chipperest, most functional London street urchins since Lionel Bart decided that what Charles Dickens REALLY needed was massed choreography. If my own (thankfully brief) experiences with homelessness had been this fun and filled with compassionate and socially responsible artists and artisans, (who fail to come home high on amphetamines and set the squat alight even once!) I would have never, ever gone home. Replete with improbable technologies, characters, coppers digital revolutionaries and all, Pirate Cinema was still fun. You just had to squint a bit to not see the plot holes and the somewhat under par prose.

sragh's review

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3.0

This was a weird one, I liked the story but almost in a patronising way because I happen to agree with many, but certainly not all, of the author's points of view. Those points of view are not unsubtly put across, they slam you in the gut and rub themselves in your face pretty unashamedly. The story seemed very forced and trite as did the dialog. I enjoyed it in the same way one enjoys a bad B movie. In spite of that, I still ended up reading it at 2am on a work night.

samnite's review

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3.0

This is a fast, fun adventure with interesting things to say about our society's complicated relationship with intellectual property in the era of the mashup. It's a tad didactic and a little uncomplicated, but I think if I were 13, I would've dug the hell out of it and it would've given me a lot to think about.