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I've been on an SF/Space Opera jag for a while now. I think it started with Iain M. Banks " Culture " series, then I segued jnto Neal Asher's Polity universe. Galactic civilizations, post-human evolution, sentient (and often sarcastic) AI, ancient civilizations and fantastic alien life forms... These books really scratch that itch in my brain.  Looking for other options, once I'd devoured all of the above, I've sampled a lot of the recent space opera, but also done quite a bit of looking back.  First stop was Asimov's Foundation/Robot/Empire novels. Asimov did a pretty impressive job of tying his disparate SF series into a cohesive universe by the latter days of his career, and it's interesting to read those novels in story-chronological order. It's an earlier era of SF, so think robots in place of AI (and oh-so terribly serious robots at that) and no aliens to speak of. But a galaxy spanning story that kept me interested through the full set of ...

Let me start with a disclaimer... I actually liked Rise of Skywalker, despite what the bulk of this post will discuss. It was fun, it was Star Wars, Rey's battle with Kylo on the Death Star remains was pure spectacle... Overall I think they did a fine job of telling the story they wanted to and wrapping up the Skywalker saga.  Sadly, there's a lot of room in "fine" to find fault.  More revelations/admissions/what have you... I really liked Last Jedi. It took me a couple of viewings, but I came away loving the chances they took and the changes they put in motion. My annoyance with Star Wars fandom after the blistering meltdown Last Jedi triggered knows no bounds.  So I was really frustrated by the way Rise walked back so many of the plot points from Last Jedi, despite all J. J. 's assurances to the contrary. I was even more annoyed by the way these things were handled... It wasn't sufficient to sideline those changes, but they did their best to invalidate them ...

(Seriously... When I posted six months ago, I had every intention of getting active again. I'd blog about movies and TV and politics and whatever else interested me.  Then 2020 happened. Politics became... Unfathomable. Movies simply stopped happening. TV is still there, but after months of binge-watching, what is there to talk about? So I'm reduced to blogging about my cat. And, oddly, pleased by that.) Years ago, I saw a documentary on cats and their behavior. It sought to explain the nuances of cat behaviour and, for those that appreciate cats, was a pretty fascinating watch. (for those that don't get cats, nothing is going to change that, and the fascinations I'm recounting will surely be lost on you.)  One of the things I learned from this documentary was that cats, when they meow, are talking to YOU. Cats do not meow at other cats. They hiss, yowl and posture. They do not meow. That interaction is limited to humans. When a cat meows at you, he is talking to you.  ...

It's been a long time since I posted here. Nearly 6 years, based on that last published post. But I think I need to start blogging again... I've been listening to audio books lately. Need something to occupy me on longer drives, especially when I'm driving by myself. I love listening to music, but sometimes I need something... more to keep my brain engaged.  I started with Fevre Dream ... one of my favorite vampire novels. Set on the Mississippi river, on a 19th century steamboat, it's one of the best vampire novels I've read. Written before Twilight and its ilk, it doesn't suffer from the need for a tragic vampire love triangle and instead settles for a bloody battle for supremacy between a pair of alpha vampires. A great read, and the audio book treatment was most satisfying.  Next up was It . I'd just seen the movies (part 2 this past fall) and, being one of Kings books I've never read, I figured it would be a good choice. Another excellen...

Though maybe not for the reasons we think… Saw Olympus Has Fallen over the weekend and had a really good time overall. Big dumb action movies are my guilty pleasure… I make no pretense to their quality, I know most of them don't hold up to any kind of critical review, but I buckle in for the ride and, if the ride is fun then I count it as time well spent at the movies. So I enjoyed the ride, even though I had some qualms by the time I walked out. My first reaction was that, as long as you could ignore the ridiculous plot devices in the third act, it was a pretty good movie. Lots of action, with good performances all around (and, as an actor, I have to admit that good performances will let me ignore a lot of other failings). I was especially amused by the way the audience burst into spontaneous applause each time Gerard Butler's character efficiently eliminated the movie's terrorist villains. There's no pretense to "I'm the good guy, so must show compassi...

Came home from the gym tonight, looked at Dani and said "I don't know how, or why, but suddenly I completely understand the concept of the word " knackered ". (Or words to that effect. I doubt I was anywhere near that articulate, frankly). Ten minutes later, I open my email to find my "A.Word.A.Day" email word of the day is… "knacker": http://wordsmith.org/words/knacker.html This kind of coincidence ALWAYS messes with my head. As I've mentioned once or twice before.

I read Mira Grant's Feed last year and loved it. I'm actually not a HUGE zombie story fan, preferring my supernatural stories on the vampiric side of things, but since romance authors co-opted the genre years ago, it's been tough finding a good vampire story that doesn't involve some kind of tortured love triangle. So I'm open to branching out into other venues. Feed hooked me right away, making me laugh out loud in the first few pages, requiring that I buy the book immediately and find out more about these characters. I was not disappointed. (No, the book's not a comedy—quite the opposite—but it's not afraid to have some fun, along with a healthy dose of social satire, in the midst of its zombie-outbreak horror story.) I just finished the sequel, Deadline , today (equally entertaining) and picked up the next book, Blackout . To my surprise and delight, I found this on the back cover: Blackout is the conclusion to the epic near-future trilogy t...

(Update courtesy of my local gas pump video screen.) In other news... The Earth is Round! Ice is Cold! Fire Burns! (Sadly, all of the above probably IS news to Tea Party politicians.) 

While browsing through Stephen King books today, looking for his book On Writing , I came across this thought… Writing controlled fiction is called "plotting." Buckling the seatbelt and letting the story take over… that is called "storytelling." Storytelling is as natural as breathing. Plotting is the literary version of artificial respiration. I found this quite reassuring, and kind of exhilarating… I've never been good at plotting out my stories, though I've lost count of the classes I've taken and books I've read that recommend (or flat out require) it. Frankly, buckling in and letting the story take over is how I've written everything I've ever felt good about. Now I've got some backup for my lack of plotting. Let's face it, Stephen King knows a little bit about storytelling. Ironically, I found this in the intro to 'Salem's Lot (probably still my favorite Stephen King novel ever) and not in On Writing. But that ju...

I don't mean to take anything away from Brave . It's a beautiful film, and a wonderful story. The ending is suitably dramatic and exciting, with a strong emotional impact. It's almost everything one would want from a Pixar film, meeting a standard they've maintained for an astonishing 13 films in a row. Almost. The only thing I can't say for Brave is that it was fun . It's far too serious and straightforward a movie for that. Oh, it tries, with its trio of foolish suitors and a father/king that's prone to reacting first and thinking... well, not often. But these moments amount to little more than the cast of fools and bumpkins that populate Shakespeare's plays... the comic relief included to entertain the groundlings. I know that Pixar's films have always had serious themes running through their main stories. I don't expect their films to be non-stop laugh riots (or I'd have been seriously disappointed long before now.) They're not a...

Maybe overselling that one but, despite the only relatively average (though still decidedly rotten) score on Rotten Tomatoes (I've seen many better movies get less than the current 41%), Rock of Ages gets my vote. But why, you may ask? Allow me to elucidate... First and foremost, the choreography. Which was, simply, staggeringly bad. Shockingly bad. So bad that when Catherine Zeta-Jones and the church ladies kicked off "Hit Me With Your Best Shot", I literally jerked back in my seat. (And yes, I literally mean literally .) So bad, I swore to myself I'd look up the choreographer so I'd know to avoid anything they do in the future, though it looks like I won't have to worry too much there, since the director (Adam Shankman) is listed as one of the choreographers (and now I know better then to ever see anything he's directed again) while the other choreographer is busy with seasons of So You Think You Can Dance, so I don't think I'll have much tro...

It's kinda funny. I've been looking forward to playing L.A. Noire since I first read about it a couple of years ago. An open-world game, set in 1940's LA from the company that virtually defined open world gaming in the current gaming generation? I get to PLAY in the world of L.A. Confidential ? I am SO there. So much so, that I'm not dissuaded by the occasional tepid review, especially since most of the trepidation seems to stem from the combat elements of the game… the actual "police work" end of things—interrogating suspects, looking for clues, etc.—seems to work, albeit not at the fastest pace ever. (And let's face it, the review I linked to got an Editor's Choice rating and its MetaCritic score is currently at 83, so it's not like there's that much negative to go on.) But maybe that "minor trepidation" should have been a clue, at least as far as that whole pacing thing is concerned. I finally got around to buying the game re...

Or, as I like to refer to it, the best movie I've ever almost walked out of.* A day later and I'm frankly fascinated by this movie. It starts with the 3D. 3D's seen a lot of abuse since Avatar and, while I enjoy seeing films in 3D, some are more worth the price of admission than others. In Hugo, Scorcese shows everyone how it should be done in the opening minutes, and keeps it up throughout the film, as he immerses you in the movie's world, allowing you to experience the full 3D effect without resorting (too often) to throwing things out of the screen at you.

I'm a sucker for Three Musketeers movies. It's one of my favorite books — I've read it numerous times, and have delved into several of the sequels  (and yes, I knew the full list before looking it up. I own them all.) By far my favorite film versions are the Richard Lester ones from the 80's: The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers . (Shot together, they were released one year apart.) Funny, a great cast, excellent swashbuckling/swordplay and, by far, the most accurate retelling of the book, it's the gold standard I measure all other Musketeer films against. (I do my best to ignore the egregious Return of the Musketeers … which, despite having the same director, main cast and screenwriter, is nearly unwatchable.) Recent attempts at this story have not been particularly impressive.

Sidney buys a fucking gun.

File it under exercises in futility (or remnant Catholic self-flagellating tendencies), but after succumbing to the need to own the Blu-ray version of the Star Wars saga, I'm now forcing myself to sit through said 'saga' from the beginning. Now that I've completed Episode 1, I have to suggest that (while I'm sure I'm hardly the first person to make this observation) it's really unfortunate that you can't give the script (and, it must be said, most of the acting) the same hi-def treatment the visuals received. I'm just sayin'.

I grew up fascinated by our space program… in love with the idea of space exploration and the possibilities inherent in that notion. Star Trek was my grail, and the Apollo astronauts were the heroes of my day. The interest, and hero worship, waned over time… not incidentally as NASA's agenda was redirected from space exploration to near-earth exploitation (I don't mean that with any negative connotations… but as the shuttle system was intended to be a "space truck" to ferry goods and personnel from earth to orbit and back, exploitation seems the right word.)

Last year about this time I was speculating about Frank Herbert's motives when he wrote Dune Messiah. I had decided to read the entire series — starting with Frank's books then circling back to read Brian's. I got sidetracked briefly by Paul of Dune *, but have continued on with the original series… with some dismay, I have to admit. The last time I tried reading the Dune series I got as far as God Emperor of Dune … and could proceed no farther. I hated to admit it, but I was simply bored by it all by that point.

'Judgment Day' predictions threaten to be a bust - CTV News

No need for comment or editorial. Read the article, and the link back to the comments that got him kicked out of Cannes. Lars Von Trier Responds: 'I'm Not Mel Gibson' | The Wrap Movies