Super-Spoiler Free Movie Review

I like Rainn Wilson and I like super hero movies, so this movie looked right up my aisle.  I was not disappointed. 

Story-Frank is a sad sack type of character whose wife/world leaves him for her drug dealing boss.  This spurs Frank into action to become the Crimson Bolt. 

Acting- The acting was done well.  What would you expectect from the all star cast they have lined up in this movie. 

Overall- this movie is a very dark comedy and will not be for everyone.  It is kind of like Kick Ass in concept but the execution of Super is much different.  It is also very different thematically.  While Kick Ass was entertaining (at least hit girl was), Super is trying to do more than just entertain and I think it succeeds wildly.  This one will eventually reach cult status. 

Avengers- Movie Review

If you are the one person in North America that did not see The Avengers this weekend, you are missing out.  It was a nonstop thrill ride with a surprising amount of humor.  The movie only slows down long enough for the viewer to catch their breath and then it picks right back up again. 

 

Avengers shows us that despite what the Dark Knight trilogy may have thought it taught us, a comic book movie does not need to be dark and 100 percent serious to be truly Awesome.  This movie showed us that we can have fun at the movies again. 

 

I did not see it in 3d so cannot comment on that, but the rest of the effects in the movie were excellent.  If you show up for a pre noon showing at AMC you can get tickets for any movie for $6, and that is what I did.  The whole family enjoyed the movie for $24.  Added bonus, my 7yo was wearing her Wonder Woman and Batman buttons that she had received on Free Comic Book Day and the lady behind the counter called her over and gave her a bag of Avengers buttons.  The movie was so good and spotlighted the stars so well, that my girls didn’t even argue about who got which pin, they were happy with any of them. 

 

It is fun for the whole family.  To be honest, had my kids not made a big deal about this movie, I might not have seen this one in theaters.  Well with all the buzz that is coming out this week, I may have.  But, I went to see this movie because my kids, especially my 7yo wanted to see it.  My wife just tagged along with no interest at all.  We all loved it.  My kids have not stopped talking about it since.  They want more.  They want to see the movie again. 

 

Go see this movie.  Be sure to stay for the stinger.  It is so worth it. 

 

 

Book Review: Graveminder, by Melissa Marr

A couple of months ago, I was casting about for a new audiobook to listen to and it happened to be right as Goodreads was releasing its Readers Choice Awards for 2011. Melissa Marr’s novel Graveminder won Best Horror, so I decided to give it a shot.

In the story, a young woman, Rebekkah Barrow (also, 2011 Egregious Name-Spelling Award Winner), is called back to her hometown of Claysville (vaguely Ozark-y/Appalachia-y) after her grandmother is mysteriously murdered. Rebekkah has fond memories of her grandmother, following her through graveyards as she tended the graves of the dead (I mean, who doesn’t?). Because apparently, the dead in Claysville don’t always stay dead…

What transpires is a tale the restless dead, family secrets, star-crossed love, trips to the Underworld, and deals with the devil, or sort of devil, or something, I’m not really sure, because it’s never made very clear, but it’s very clear that he’s The Bad Guy.

One thing that is very clear, however, is that Graveminder is a patchwork of supernatural cliches that never rises above formula and seems to be trying very very hard to capture the same audience as Charlaine Harris and Sookie Stackhouse. Sadly, this book sinks below what I would expect for even something mediocre — mostly because I feel that Marr was lazy.

At the beginning of the story, Rebekkah contemplates her youth back in Claysville from her apartment in the Gaslight district of San Diego. That’s a hard task, because there ISno Gaslight district in San Diego. It’s Gaslamp. Do you know how long it took me to find the correct use of Gaslamp versus Gaslight? About 40 seconds on Wikipedia. To me, that’s a lazy author (and editor). Now that may seem picky, but horror authors require readers’ suspension of disbelief to be effective, so being credible in other parts of the story is critically important. So she began to lose me almost from the outset. Still, I had hope.

Later, we learn that the “normal” citizens of Claysville get headaches and forgetful when confronted with anything supernatural. Seriously? That’s the way you’re going to handle the fact that someone sees a kid that died last week walking down the street? They just get a headache and forget it? How convenient. Then, when someone manages to man-up and ask a question, you get statements like, “Things are just different here” and “That’s the way things are here.” Oy. Again, I can’t suspend that much disbelief and for a storyteller, that’s just lazy.

Later, we find out that there’s a secret contract between the powers that be in the town and the Bad Guy. Rebekkah’s love interest goes to the Underworld and signs it (for a new generation) in blood without reading it. Without. Reading. It. I’m just going to stop here.

Clearly, by winning the Goodreads Readers Choice Award, there are a lot of people that liked Graveminder. Obviously, I’m not one of them.

One star out of five

Book Review: The City & The City, by China Mieville

One of my favorite books from a couple of years ago was Kraken by China Mieville. I enjoyed that audiobook so much that there was a part of me that had some trepidation about reading more of Mieville’s books because I worried that maybe they wouldn’t be as good as that first one, right? Please tell me that I’m not the only person that feels this way when they first discover a new writer or band.

Anyway, I overcame my perhaps unwarranted hesitancy and read Mieville’s novel previous to Kraken: The City and The City. At its core, it’s a detective novel. The setting is the rival Eastern European-ish cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma. A woman from one city is found dead in the other and haggard Beszel detective Tyador Borlu must work through the barriers in his own corrupt department as well as navigate the other city-state’s unfamiliar customs and inherent distrust to solve the crime.

Now, this might sound all pretty straightforward, but Mieville’s innovation is the locale. Beszel and Ul Qoma aren’t neighboring cities like East and West Berlin, or Buda and Pest. Their streets and buildings literally co-occupy the same space. This creates an environment in which citizens of one city are required to “unsee” and “unhear” the citizens of the other, even though they might be walking down the same street or sitting on the same park bench. Monitoring everyone from both cities is the (almost) all-seeing secret police, Breach, which ruthlessly “disappears” offenders that break the rules of separation.

Of course, Mieville is too subtle a writer to spell things out with exposition. He just dunks you right in and makes you figure the nuances of this world out for yourself. For me, this caused the first several chapters to be downright disorienting. And I found that slightly off-balance feeling staying with me during the entire book – which I’m pretty sure was the intention all along.

The overlapping cities and the beaten down, paranoid police-state culture that comes with it are the real stars of the book and create a palpable noir feel. Of course, the construct invites clear parallels to our own society, whether it’s “unseeing” the homeless person you walk past everyday, or “unhearing” facts that disagree with your own political worldview, or having a population that’s willfully ignorant. These contemplations lingered with me long after I put the book down.

The City and The City is solid detective mystery set in one of the most original backgrounds I’ve come across in a long time that can even induce a little self-reflection. See? Nothing to worry about.

Four solid stars.

Zone One- A second look

Based on Steve's review of Zone One, I decided to pick it up.  This book isn't really your normal zombie novel.  It doesn't concentrate so much on the gore and is more philisophical.  This effect is magnified as the author writes in a stream of conciousness style.  The main character is suffer from PASD (post apocalypse stress disorder) so this stream of conciousness can jump around quite a bit and not seem to make much sense.  There are many instances where the timeline just shifts without any warning.  It makes the book a much slower read, but it is still a good story and quite enjoyable.  It is actually a litterary zombie story.  I think Steve's assessment of a 4 is fair.  I am not a huge fan of stream of conciousness, but this one was still engaging. 


Here are some things I clipped from this novel:
"Time slowed down in situations like this, to grant dread a bigger stage."
"He stopped hooking up with other people once he realized that the first thing he did was calculate whether or not he could out run them."

Yes the book is dark.  I won't say it is for everyone, but it is good. 

Scifi Fallacy-Abandoning Earth for a Space Station

This is a pretty standard starting point for a lot of Science Fiction.  Man has to flee the Earth as it is no longer habitable.  I have seen it in books and movies.  Sometimes the people are leaving for a location that is habitable.  Most times, however, they are just fleeing the planet in order to life in space. 

 

Why is this a fallacy?  In the case that we have destroyed the planet completely or in a scenario where the sun is about to expand and swallow us, it isn’t.  Pretty much any other situation makes leaving the Earth foolish.  Let us go with a worst case scenario:  Nuclear Holocaust.  Radiation envelops the planet.  You know another place with deadly radiation?  Space.  You might argue that the earth is poisoned, the air, the water, the ground itself.  To that I ask, “where are you going to get these essentials to go on you space station?”  If the planet gets too hot or too cold, I could tell you another place with temperature extremes.  Yep, Space. 

 

Even if the Earth was a very hostile environment for life, it would not be more hostile than space itself.  Instead of building a space station and further poisoning the planet transporting everyone on earth to said space station, why wouldn’t you build a secure environment on the surface of this new hostile earth.  It would make sense to do this so we could have easy access to ores, water, and oxygen. I guess you could mine asteroids for ore, but then you have to get there and find one with the ore you need.  Water, good luck in space.  Poison water is better than no water.  Air, could be manufactured with plants, but to support even a thousand people that would be a lot of plants.  I hydrogen is common enough, if you could find a way to capture it, you could then introduce it into your oxygen rich atmosphere on a rainforest ship to produce water, but all of that could easily be done on the Earth’s surface and out of the vacuum of space. 

 

Instances where leaving are the best option:  Problems with the sun, the Earth is breaking up.  We are over-crowded and have to get some people off the planet.  To be honest an overcrowded planet would soon be fighting for resources and would not stay overcrowded for long.  Governments would likely step in and control reproductive rights long before they would come up for a plan for space colonization. 

 

Conclusion-  As long as the Earth is still here it will remain populated.  It could even lose its ability to support life and it would still be a better option than living in a space station.

 

Cargo (2009) movie Review

Cargo is a surprisingly good Swiss(German Language) Scifi movie.  It is one of those turn the lights down and tv up type movies that is very big on tension. 

 

The story follows Dr. Portmann as she is hired on to a cargo ship making a deep space run.  She is doing this so she can make enough money to buy passage to Rhea.  Rhea is the replacement to Earth as humanity has finally ruined the planet.  Each member of the crew does a shift awake to monitor the ship.  During Dr. Portmann’s shift, strange things start happening.  It was somewhat predictable as I was pretty sure where the story was going. 

 

The performances can’t be faulted.  Everyone sold their performances well enough.  Nothing stand out in either direction.

 

The CG effects were really a crap shoot.  In parts they were absolutely stunning. In other parts it was fairly obvious and pulled me out of the film.  Keep in mind that this is a very effects driven movie that wasn’t made in Hollywood and it is far more impressive. 

 

Overall I was pretty impressed by this CG heavy, foreign, scifi film.  While the story wasn’t earth shattering it was passable and the writing kept the tension pretty high throughout the movie.  I don’t usually comment on the score, but it was pretty amazing.  It added to the tension and sounded excellent.  I think most people will enjoy this movie.  I don’t think it is rated as it is a foreign film, but it seems like it would fall in the PG13 realm. 

 

On a side note.  I watched this movie on my new XBMC setup.  If you “buy” downloadable movies or rip your own collection on to your hard drive, XBMC is a must have program.  It makes browsing your movies a much more enjoyable experience. Not to mention that It seems like I get a better picture from it than I do my DVD player.  But that might be because I have a crappy DVD player.