Thursday, January 13, 2005

Books, comics, music, TV

New review posted at SFFWorld last night of Karin Lowachee’s Burndive. Very enjoyable and worthy successor to her first novel, Warchild. About 1/3 into the novel, it became ever more hard to put down – something I think every writer wants to achieve. I thought her debut novel, Warchild, was a bit more evenly paced, but Burndive really showcases her growing skills of characterization and overall writing ability.

Heading over to the comics shop for my bimonthly visit today and I’ll be picking up

Incredible Hulk #77 (the return of PAD!)
Flash #217
JLA #110
JSA #69

I may pick up Nightwing #101 and perhaps a trade. I need to catch up with Fables, but I’ve also been wanting to read BKV’s Runaways and there is a good deal of stuff by Morrison I need to read. Ahhh…the difficult choices of the comic book reader.

Speaking of which, I’m debating, as most comic readers do, cutting down my pull list, probably dropping Superman/Batman and Superman. S/B is ok, Carlos Pacheco is a wonderful artist, but the stories haven’t really moved in a positive or negative way, it is just sort of there. Superman is moving very slowly and though I’ve stuck it out this far with the Azzarello/Lee storyline, I’m just really not caring enough to see where it goes. For the most part, I’ll probably hold off my Superman fix (aside from JLA) until Morrison & Quietly’s All-Star Superman starts appearing on shelves. JSA is probably on the cut list to, even though I’ve got the majority (missing only 2 or 3 issues) of the current series. Geoff Johns is a capable writer, but again, I haven’t really cared too much about what is going on in the book in a few months/issues. I may also drop the Fantastic Four after Waid/Weiringo leave and JMS and McKone take over. I like McKone’s art, but I haven't been too overwhelmed with JMS’s Spidey and I’m getting a bit bored with the pacing of Supreme Power, also maybe on the chopping block. All told, I may be cutting roughly $10 from my floppy single issues, but funneling it back into Trades.

The Superman film is shaping almost as well as Batman Begins. Kate Bosworth is going to be Lois Lane, Kevin Spacey will be Lex Luthor (great choice there), James Marsden (who played Cyclops in X-Men) is set to join, as well. I’ve got a lot of faith in Bryan Signer, since I’ve been very happy with all the films I’ve seen by him, I hope he can continue with the quality on Superman Returns. Singer is a director who tends to work with the same actors on various films – he worked with Spacey on the great Usual Suspects, Ian McKellen on the X-Men films and Apt Pupil, Marsden on the X-Men films and rumors have the guy starring in Singer’s TV show, House, joining the cast as well. I think this is a good thing, James Cameron uses the same actors very frequently Bill Paxton (Aliens* and Titanic) and Michael Biehn (The Abyss, Aliens and Terminator 1 & 2) and Bruce Campbell has been in, I think, every Sam Raimi film.

* That's it man, game over man, game over! What the fuck are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?

Found this cool link the other day The Invisible Library, which lists all the books that only exist in the pages of other books like the Travels of Jain Farstrider in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time (yes I admit to reading most of the books), Machine’s Way from Stephen King’s The Dark Half, Lovecraft’s invented book The Necronomicon, and the various “unwritten books by great authors” in Cain and Abel’s library in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.

Rick Klaw dedicated one of his Geeks with Books columns at SFSite to this phenomenon. Rick is the author of the book Geek Confidential: Echoes From the 21st Century published by Monkey Brain books

Speaking of the SFSite, go over there and vote for your favorite books of the year. Very similar criteria to what I do over at the SFFWorld forums (hell, I kind of borrowed some of that criteria from them).

I also added Rick Kleffel’s Agony Column (http://trashotron.com/agony/) over at the left. I constantly get there from other blogs and Rick always presents some interesting things there.

I’m listening to Velvet Revolver’s Contraband right now, and the more I listen to it, the more I like it. I fell in love the song Fall to Pieces before it became overplayed. Sure the song may have a bit of a power-ballad feel to it, but after watching the video, I really got the feeling Scott Weiland poured his heart into the song and Slash sounds better than he did with G’N’R. Some of the songs sound like they could have been pulled right off of STP’s album Purple or Four, both albums I enjoyed very much. Overall, as I said, Contraband a pretty dam solid album. Back when I saw Disturbed at the Starland Ballroom over the summer, some of the bouncers said Velvet Revolver, who performed the night before, were absolutely amazing.

Watched the concluding part of the Battlestar Galactica mini on the SciFi channel last night, and I have to say, I enjoyed it. It is pretty intriguing and raises some interesting questions. Is it a perfect show? No. Is it watchable entertainment? Absolutely, so I’ll probably be watching it every Friday night, though it will never be able to replace FarScape.

Rambled a bit much today, huh?

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