Tagged: review

Harry Potter Mania!

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It seems that every news outlet in the world is scrambling to keep up with the Harry Potter frenzy. And I know you people at home are wondering, "How can I keep up with all of these mildly diverting stories that all rehash the same three or four facts?" Well, friends, wonder no more, for we have gathered those stories for you, in the handy "hyperlink" format, for your clicking pleasure. Please, no applause…it’s what we’re here for.

The Boston Globe manages to find some doom-and-gloom in the story of how the Harry Potter books got millions of kids to read long, complicated books: some of those kids might not be reading much else! (Shock! Horror!)

Continuing the all-Harry-all-the-time drumbeat, the Minneapolis Star Tribune anatomizes the secrets of Harry’s appeal.

And the Arizona Republic ponders the musical question: Will Harry Potter become a classic?

The Austin Statesman-American worries that young fans will abandon books entirely after Deathly Hallows. (Just as millions of Americans have given up on television after the Sopranos finale.)

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GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: Fox Bunny Funny

fox-4984868Wordless comics are usually considered “kids stuff,” but not in this case. I hope inattentive parents aren’t buying Fox Bunny Funny for their little darlings, since that might lead to a lot of nightmares and uneasy questions. But, for those of us who can handle explicit Fox-on-Bunny violence, Fox Bunny Funny is worth seeking out.

As I said, it’s a wordless anthropomorphic comic, set in a world much like our own populated by Foxes (who hunt, eat, and torment Bunnies) and Bunnies (who hide and try to survive). Our nameless hero starts off as a young Fox with odd urges – he doesn’t want to kill Bunnies, he wants to be one of them. And this causes all sorts of trouble for him.

The story is told in three chapters, presumably “Fox,” “Bunny,” and “Funny.” (They’re titled with little icons: a fox, a bunny, and a mixture of the two.) I’m not entirely sure what “Funny” has to do with anything – this isn’t humorous in any conventional sense – so I think it must be a reference to “funny animals.” Anyone who buys this looking for anthropomorphic humor will be very disappointed.

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BOOK REVIEW: Soon I Will Be Invincible

invincible-3662675Doctor Impossible is a supervillain; Fatale is a superheroine. They fight, and you know who wins. The end.

OK, maybe that’s not enough.

I haven’t been keeping track, but there seem to have been a lot of novels about superpowered folks lately. I mean, besides the usual licensed products. There was Robert Mayer’s influential Superfolks back in the 1970s, the “Wild Cards” series off and on for the last couple of decades, and then Michael Bishop’s Count Geiger’s Blues in the early ‘90s, but, otherwise, there wasn’t a heck of a lot out there for a long time.

But in the last couple of years, there have been books like Tom DeHaven’s It’s Superman (which was officially licensed by DC Comics, but was a very different kind of book than the usual), Minister Faust’s From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain, James Maxey’s Nobody Gets the Girl, and others – on top of the increasing numbers of licensed books, it feels like we’re getting a lot of superheroes in prose these days.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Transformers

bumblebee_2007movie-6340859When this summer hit, only one image popped into my head, and it wasn’t a black spider, a drunk pirate, or a dorky kid with glasses. All I saw since day one was a semi truck that turned into a 50-foot robot. So as you can assume, going into the film my expectations were a little high, and you had better believe they were met with bells on.

Seeing as this film is truly the ultimate summer blockbuster (thanks, Mr. Bay), I’m going to have to break down this film like I do all others with the acting, the plot, and of course the one thing that ties the entire movie together: the effects.

Starting with the worst note and working our way up, the acting wasn’t the worst I’ve seen in a Bay film, but wasn’t exactly Gone with the Wind. I don’t know about you, but I expect when I’m going to see a movie about giant robots from space, I want Gone with the Wind.

Putting aside my disdain for Shia LaBeouf, I was just like every other fanboy out there on the Internet that rolled his or her eyes when the list of cameo’s for the flick got released. Bernie Mac’s presence in the film was completely superfluous, other than about eight seconds, his entire sequence should have gotten well acquainted with the floor. As well as John Turturro’s scenes. Turturro plays the cocky secret government agency role very well, but after about 10 minutes, it becomes too much to handle, and he needs to go away. When doing the entire exposition scene of Megatron and the plot-focusing All-Spark cube, there was no need for a cocky government type. Just faces of awe.

LaBeouf and Megan Fox did a decent job of playing the frightened kids… at first. But once the imminent threat of world domination became second priority to LeBeouf’s parents finding him alone in a room with a girl, the film kind of lost its head. As scary as chracter actor Kevin Dunn can be, a gigantic robot with a sword is far scarier. Finally, Jon Voight, Josh Duhamel, and Tyrese “Hero For Hire” Gibson played roles that were both aiding in the “Bay” way of showing the how disasters effect people on a human level, but these characters were effortlessly forgettable in comparison to the robots.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy Magazine News

The fifth issue of Helix, a free on-line magazine dedicated to publishing stories too extreme for regular print SF/F magazines, has just been published, with new stories by Esther Friesner, Brenda Clough, and others.

Locus, the newsmagazine of the SF/Fantasy field, has mailed their July issue, and posted a profile page about it on their website. The July issue includes interviews with Peter S. Beagle and Paolo Bacigalupi, results from this year’s Locus Poll, and lots of news and reviews.

There’s a new issue of SF Site for July, with lots of reviews, a listing of new books received, and whatnot.

Strange Horizons has an update every Monday, and this week is no exception; new this time is a story by Jerome Steuart and a poem by David Lunde.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Live Free Or Die Hard

1559747260-1952543Well, after 12 years John McClain is back in full force with Live Free or Die Hard, the fourth sequel in the series, and the sixth sequel to come out this summer. I have to say going into the flick I wasn’t expecting much, especially after seeing the trailer, which only made me believe Ric Meyer’s micro-review in saying that this isn’t a Die Hard sequel, it’s actually the unwritten sequel for Unbreakable. So between that and the fact that this is the first Die Hard film to receive a PG-13 Rating, I was less than excited for it.

Having that frame of mind, I think I was able to enjoy the film much more. I wasn’t looking for a direct comparison to the first three movies, I just wanted a good John McClain movie, and that’s what I got. The biggest issue with Bruce Willis’ character is that Willis himself has so drastically changed his acting style in the last 12 years, that it’s like asking Walt Disney’s head to unfreeze itself and start drawing exactly like he used to. Granted the fun loving, swearing Bruce Willis that we remember from the first flicks is long gone, and we’re left with the bald, grumpy old man Willis who looks like he has to force himself to smile, but we all just have to change with the times, and even McClain has to age.

Following the formula of With a Vengeance, our hero is accompanied by a would-be sidekick, who fights spends a good chunk of the movie deciding whether or not this is a battle worth fighting, and of course breaking out of his mold by the end of the movie to become someone super cop John McClain can respect. This time around, we get Mac Boy Justin Long as the cowardly super hacker Matt Fuller. Long played the role just as any sidekick should, by accentuating the heroism of…well, the hero.

Also along for the ride were Maggie Q and Tim Olyphant as the evil duo. Everywhere I go, guys are falling in love with Maggie Q, and until checking out this movie I didn’t know why. She manages to play the seductive-yet-deadly henchwoman very well. And as per usual, Olyphant oozes charisma as the bad guy in this picture. I’ve been following this guy since Gone in 60 Seconds, and I’ve had nothing but good things to say about each of his roles.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy Book Reviews

highlord-3818281I should warn you about these link-lists: Mondays tend to be longer than usual (since there’s a lot of content that goes up on the weekend, or early on Monday), and the beginning of the month tends to be longer than usual. Since we’re just past both of those things, this is going to be a really long one…

Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist reviews Dragons of the Highlord Skies by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

A.N. Wilson reviews Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go in the Telegraph.

SF Crowsnest reviews a whole bunch of things this week:

  • first, here’s a review for Paranormal Borderlands of Science, edited by Kendrick Frazier – a collection of essays by scientists about the plausibility of and evidence for various paranormal claims.
  • and there’s a review of Cory Doctorow’s new short story collection, Overclocked
  • another review covers Kay Kenyon’s new science fantasy novel Bright of the Sky
  • a review of Ian McDonald’s Brasyl
  • a review of Eliot Fintushel’s Breakfast With the Ones You Love
  • a review of Kage Baker’s new “Company” short story collection, Gods and Pawns
  • a review of David Deveraux’s Hunter’s Moon
  • a review of a new art book – James Bama: American Realist – about the cover artist best known for his ‘70s Doc Savage series
  • a review of Charles de Lint’s Memory & Dream
  • a review of Chris Moriarty’s Spin Control
  • a review  of David Anthony Durham’s first fantasy novel, the epic Acacia
  • and several other reviews, too, but my fingers are getting tired.

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An iPhone Odyssey: My voyage to technological supremacy

354638930_c818db973e-8430897(An editorial note: ComicMixers have no doubt noticed our intrepid crew tends to share certain fannish predilections. Among these is a lust for Apple technology. No less than five of us either ordered or purchased iPhones the day the thing came out. This is the first review; we’ll probably be referencing our experiences in the future. Now we can easily text message each other while getting our Doctor Who fix.)

I decided last week that I needed to have an iPhone. The hype had finally gotten to me, the slick GUI, the web features, all of it. This was further enhanced by my awful experiences dealing with Verizon Wireless and my Motorola RAZR breaking during normal use more than once.

It was no surprise that I reached to Apple in a time of need. Every computer I have ever used on a consistent basis has been an Apple from my parents’ Macintosh SE back in the late 80s to my current MacBook Pro. The thing I believe sets Apple apart from other companies is the concern they have for user experience. This is reflected everywhere from their more elegant operating system to their excellent customer service. The only serious problem I ever had with Apple was my parents’ Power Mac 8100, which had a power supply problem they were unable to diagnose, and plagued the machine for over a year.

The Internet was abuzz with rumors and speculation about how difficult or not difficult it would be to get an iPhone on the first day. I firmly believed I could wait at either Apple Store location in Manhattan and get an iPhone with no problem. However, I thought that waiting outside all day in the heat would be decidedly unpleasant. I turned my attention to Garden City’s Roosevelt Field Mall. It’s an upscale mall with an Apple Store and is the tenth largest mall in the country in terms of space. Certainly they would have room to enclose the line in comfortable air conditioning.

I could not have been more wrong. Standing in line at Roosevelt Field was largely a nightmare. The line was entirely outside on their southern parking garage structure with the overwhelming majority of the line on the top level of the structure, exposed to the elements. The heat and sun exposure got to me, leaving me with moderate sunburn; I was far from alone in that. To treat customers lined up to purchase a $500 item like that is ridiculous. They had space inside and they refused to use it to accommodate us. Mall security defended themselves by saying this was the same way they treated people lining up for the Playstation 3 but those lines were overwhelmingly eBay scalpers.

At 6 PM the lines were gradually let into the store and by 7 I was on my way back to Manhattan with an 8 GB iPhone. The Apple Store had plenty and I believe that one can still walk into any Apple Store in the area and buy one as we speak. Was it stupid to wait in line all afternoon for a product with a seemingly low scarcity factor? Probably, but sometimes it’s fun to be the first person you know to have something cool. I was ready to activate my phone through iTunes and be on my way.

Activation was, unfortunately, another arduous process. The AT&T server seemingly buckled under the strain of all the Mac addicts and stories of long struggles to activate were prevalent. It took my phone nine hours to activate. The iPhone will do nothing until activated so I had a $600 brick until 6:30 Saturday morning.

At that point I could use all of its fantastic abilities except for receiving calls. I was playing around with all of the wonderful iPhone features but every time someone called me I had to dig around in my bag for my old RAZR to answer the call. My number was not transferred to my iPhone until about 11:30 AM Sunday. It’s unclear whether this was a problem with AT&T or Verizon, but it was another inconvenience in a weekend filled with them. Everyone but Apple really screwed up this process and I can’t help but wonder if Apple doesn’t need to be more vigilant in choosing their partners including the malls they choose to put stores in and their cell phone network.

The iPhone, incidentally, is wonderful once it works. I urge everyone in need of a device that does all these things to go buy one as soon as possible. I hear they’re still plentiful at Apple retail locations, although AT&T owned stores by and large sold out Friday night.

Science Fiction/Fantasy Book Reviews, June 28th

  • News
  • June 28, 2007

The Agony Column loves Matthew Hughes’s new far-future philosophical detective comedy The Spiral Labyrinth, and doesn’t care who knows it.

OF Blog of the Fallen reviews Tobias S. Buckell’s second novel, the space opera Ragamuffin.

Strange Horizons reviews the new Mike Resnick-edited anthology of future police stories, Alien Crimes.

Blogcritics reviews Interworld, by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves. (An amusing sidenote: Gaiman recently explained how he and Reaves originally pitched the idea as a movie, couldn’t get any interest from Hollywood, and wrote it up as a novel instead…only to have Hollywood come begging.)

The St. Marys-Mt. Druitt Star (one of my favorite newspaper names, by the way) has a very short, and not terribly useful, review of Cornelia Funke’s acclaimed Young Adult novel The Thief Lord.

David Louis Edelman (author of Infoquake and all-around smart guy) has been re-reading all of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth stories and blogging about them; he’s just now gotten to that interesting item, Unfinished Tales.

Kate Nepveu reviews Charles Stross’s Hugo-nominated novel Glasshouse.

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ELAYNE RIGGS: Jesus in the clouds

  • News
  • June 27, 2007

elayne200-3030740In entertainment, as with so many other subjective phenomena, many of the old clichés come into play, the main ones being "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and "I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like." While one purpose of entertainment may be to seize on the universal in order to create a bond between creators and audience that explores or delights in our common humanity, it’s also a fact that everyone brings their own unique experiences to bear on their chosen entertainment, so different people can often have very different reactions to the same creation.

And this is fine, if it’s understood. But people often also use experiences to reinforce their preconceived notions, and the more extreme or emotional their experiences have been, the more adamant the reinforcement. This is true whether the subject is religious, political, scientific, cultural, whatever. Our unique prisms color our perceptions, and always will.

Let’s look at the most recent example from the political blogosphere, involving a pundit named Melinda Henneberger who wrote a New York Times op-ed about why Democratic candidates should abandon one of their current core values and risk losing their base in an effort to perhaps maybe possibly woo a few people who don’t much care for their core values anyway. One reason a lot of liberal bloggers have come down hard on Henneberger, besides the absurdity of her premise, is how she backs it up:

"Over 18 months, I traveled to 20 states listening to women of all ages, races, tax brackets and points of view speak at length on the issues they care about heading into ’08. They convinced me that the conventional wisdom was wrong about the last presidential contest, that Democrats did not lose support among women because ‘security moms’ saw President Bush as the better protector against terrorism. What first-time defectors mentioned most often was abortion."

On its face this is an anecdotal confession, with no more solid evidence to support it than anyone else getting on a soapbox or pulpit or keyboard and backing up their personal agenda based on things they’ve been told in private conversations or email, made even more nebulous by its deliberate vagueness. Upon deeper examination, it seems to be typical of "inside the beltway" know-it-alls who start out with a certain premise then deliberately seek out confirmation of that premise. As Avedon Carol observed, "where do you start when you’re actually looking for women to interview who were ‘first-time defectors’ to voting for a Republican in 2004?"  And Tom Hilton notes that this is nothing new: "This, of course, is how it’s done in the exciting fast-paced world of professional columnizing. David Broder goes out among the Common Folk and finds a deep yearning for bipartisan compromise. Tom Friedman takes a taxi and learns that globalization is a force for good. And Melinda Henneberger talks — no, ‘listens’ — to women and discovers, amazingly, that they agree with her on abortion. They go out with an agenda and ‘hear’ whatever confirms it."

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