Entertainment

I finish book.

Entertainment, Random

In a recent post I talked about buying several new graphic novels and getting a new book that I was really excited about. Well I was so excited about it that I actually finished it, which brings my average up to about 70%. (damn that wine book!) I’ve also finished most of the graphic novels. But I’m starting to think that reading 3 series at once is going to get expensive, with them going for about 10 bucks each. I only like the Trade Paperbacks (TPB) because I like to collect them.

Well anyway, here’s the reviews.

Fables: I like it, but it seems a little forced, maybe that’s just because it had to introduce so many characters it didn’t have time for a strong enough story. a little like the first X-Men movie.

DMZ: A strong first book. It drops you in the middle of an occupied NYC and just hits the ground running. It has certain cinematic elements, so much so that I can really see this being made into a movie at some point.

Transmetropolitain: Spider Jerusalem is one of the best characters to come along in a long time. The book has certain elements that also made DMZ a good read, like the city setting. But being a futuristic novel it takes things to the extreme. Spider reminds me a lot of Tank Girl, which is exactly why I hope they never make a movie out of this comic. Well live action movie anyway.

World War Z: This book was absolutely amazing. Well for me anyway since I love Zombie / Post-Apocalyptic movies. But I don’t think the zombie genre has ever been done on this scale, I should know, I’ve seen a lot of those movies. It’s always set in some small town, a single farmhouse, or at most you get to see the story of one group of survivors from all over the place. The notable exception being Land of the Dead, but for some reason that movie really didn’t do it for me. just something wasn’t there. But I digress…
In this book you get to see the story from all sides. The narrative is set up as the author interviews survivors of the war 10 years after victory has been declared. Most of the interviews are only a few pages long, he uses them to widen the scope of the story. Not that it doesn’t have some of the cliched zombie movie parts, rich people paying for protection, greedy people looting. But those are balanced out by the depth of the story.
But what really makes this book different is that the author (Max Brooks) has thought of everything. I mean what would happen if the US army set up in New Jersey to fight the 10 million Zombies that came pouring out of NYC? (it doesn’t end well for us) How would the governments of the world really respond if their people started dying and returning to life? Japan? China? North Korea? Cuba? Russia? You get a glimpse of all those places through the course of the story. What happens when zombies walk/fall into the ocean? (They just keep walking) The story also goes on after we start to win the fight against the zombies, on to the cleanup and reclamation of the world.

What I’m really interested is that this book is being made into a movie. But the problem is that they’ll never be able to get all this story into one movie. I trust the writer that they have in charge now, J. Michael Straczynski who wrote the show Babylon 5. He has a history of being able to weave in a lot of details in one story.

Here’s my final word on the book. I like it so much I might start reading it again.

Later!
Mark

Tips on Indy 4.

Entertainment, Movies

I found this list of thing the film makers can do to not ruin it. As a person who writes things down uncertain if anyone actually reads them I can appreciate his work. I would add, Keep George Lucas as far out of the loop as possible. I know he wrote, directed, or produced pretty much everything that was really good in the 80’s. But he’s out of it, totally out of touch with reality.

Tips for Indy 4

Smodcast. The best podcast evar.

Entertainment, The Interweb

Ok, so anyone that knows me realizes that I’m a huge Kevin Smith fan so this may not be the biggest realization. But the “Smodcast” (Smith-Mosier Podcast) is the funniest thing I hear all week. Kevin’s a really good storyteller so that might be a reason that all the episodes so far are really funny. They just tell stories about.. well about whatever they want to really, but mostly about things that happened to them. They just have so much chemistry together, I hope everybody can get time to listen to it.

Later!
Mark

Quick Stop Entertainment

The Core: Such a guilty pleasure I should be put to death.

Entertainment, Movies

I read an article about guilty pleasures once that said we shouldn’t be ashamed to admit that we like them. We’ll I’ll admit that I like ‘Roadhouse’ and ‘Rad’ or any other 80’s movie that starts with the letter ‘R’. But this is a tough one. ‘The Core’ has a solid disaster movie beginning, things blow up, birds go crazy. I mean come on an Oscar winner lands the freaking space shuttle in the middle of downtown LA. I mean the cast of this movie is awesome, Delroy Lindo, Hillary Swank, Aaron Eckhart, that guy, that other guy. All these people have been in other, much better movies. But somehow this became the ‘Showgirls’ of disaster movies. Not that this genre has had many shining moments. I really don’t know how this movie got made, I guess Hollywood does really think we’re all idiots.

I can pretty much put up a solid defense for the first half of the movie. Standard stuff, lone scientist finds out that the world is ending, nobody believes him, incredible technology… but that’s where this movie loses it. Unlike ‘Armageddon’ which has a remarkably similar plot (really really similar). There’s just no way anybody with a functionionign brain can believe the technology in this movie. So don’t try. Just ride it out. Actually you could just stop watching the movie at about halfway and just make up your own ending and be just as happy with yourself. You’d probably come up with something as good as the real thing.

Movie Physics Reviews

Don’t you know who I think I am?

Entertainment, music

So after the last post defending my overall musical taste I’m going to write a post about the new Fallout Boy album. I like their music, what I don’t like is that douchebags sometimes also like their music. This is best illustrated by a new cingular commercial where a random frat guy at the gym is talking about how the new song, “This aint a scene, it’s an arms race” gets him pumped. Then he procedes to have a seizure or play air guitar, whichever is worse.

Their last album was pretty much the soundtrack to my Metro rides last summer. So much so that I pretty much played out all the songs and can’t stand them any more. But give them a few years and they’ll be good all over again. Just like those Black Eyed Peas songs that I ran into the ground, circa 2 years ago.

At first listen the songs were nothing special, but I just put them in with the rest anyway. I found that whenever they would come up on shuffle I really liked them. So I listened to them yesterday in order again and I decided that they are in fact good. Which is pretty much the begining of the end for them. I’ll most likely overplay them and be done with them.

So it begins sir.

Mark