The Evil Eyebrow

Category: Movies

  • Peter Hamilton; Void Trilogy

    For anyone who cares, Peter Hamilton is supposed to be publishing the first novel of the Void Trilogy in summer ’07. Yay for us.

    Hopefully, he will have scaled back a bit from the grand overarching craziness that was Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained. They were both wayyyyy too long and complex. I believe that people who complain about world building have Peter Hamilton in mind.

    Don’t get me wrong, I like his writing. It is original and interesting, but sometimes you just have to cut to the chase. Tad Williams has the same problem. And don’t get me started about Terry Goodkind and his inability to finish a story.

    If you want to read some good stuff by Hamilton, stick with the Night’s Dawn Triology, and the first two Greg Mandel books.

  • Sick as Proverbial Pooch

    I have a nasty cold. It started on Friday last and by Saturday I was down for the count. The couch and I became very close friends. I didn’t sleep during the day much, so I watched a lot of movies and TV. Here’s the count, plus my evaluation.

  • The Guardian. Kevin Costner and Aashton Kutcher. Old-hand Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer teaches values to New Recruit. Entirely predictable and not worth your time, although it had cool rescue scenes.
  • Flyboys. James Franco. American Cowboy goes to Europe to fly against Germany in WWI. Really REALLY predicatvle and not worth your time.
  • Accepted. Justin Long. High School graduate who isn’t a slacker somehow is not accepted to any colleges (?) and through a series of unfortunate events, founds his own. Exactly what I expected, so it didn’t disappoint, but my expectations were low. The main character had an annoying tendency to pratfall every third scene or so. Why? I don’t know; it was unnecessary.

    • Still to be watched: A Scanner Darkly and Little Miss Sunshine.

    TV Movies watched this weekend: Under Siege, the only Steven Seagal movie worth watching; Love Actually, a Christmas movie that drove me nuts in the theater, but wasn’t horrible on TV with Tivo at hand; Notting Hill, one of Jenn and My favorite movies; How to lose a guy in 10 Days, which while stupid, wasn’t so stupid I didn’t like it.

    I also watched an excellent snake documentary on the Discovery Channel with that Nature Narrator Dude who does all sorts of shows (who’s name I cannot recall). They had snake-cameras and everything. Even a cute baby cobra.

  • Robert Jordan

    As mentioned in my post of April 7, 2006, Robert Jordan, the author of The Wheel of Time, was diagnosed with amyloidosis and has been undergoing treatment since May.

    Silly me, I had figured that the Tor website where I first caught the news would occasionally have updates, at least to say, “He’s not dead yet.” I continue to be unimpressed by Tor’s web presence. They need to take some pages from the manual of Baen Books.

    I apparently haven’t been shopping around the right web spaces. An article in Forbes brought me up to speed. It covers the difference between a fan and a FAN. The first type likes RJ’s books and the second is willing to donate bone marrow for his treatment.

    Latest prediction is that the last book will be out in 2009, at some obscenely high page-count. RJ has stated in my presence that there will be only one more book, if we have to wheel it out of Barnes and Noble with a handcart.

    Hopefully, RJ’s illness will go into complete remission and he will be able to get back to the writing that he loves. Personally, if it is a choice between the man’s life and the end of the Wheel of Time, I say that he should concentrate on recovery.

    Robert Jordan’s struggle with amyloidosis and other things is chronicled in his blog.

  • James Cameron is the Man!

    James Cameron is exploring new territory, as usual. He will be coming out with a movie that pushes boundaries back, just like The Terminator, The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, and Titanic.

    This project (which isn’t exactly new, but I just heard about it) will combine live action actors and the technology that brought the world Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, plus it will filmed and broadcast in 3D!

    The motion capture techniques used for Gollum will be updated and used to map live action movements onto alien bodies in a manner that is supposed to be seamless and indistinguishable from actual actors.

    This has me excited! I can hardly wait…until 2009 when it will be released. The title is Avatar, and you can catch it at IMDB or at Wikipedia.

  • Transformers Trailer

    There’s a new trailer out for the Transformers movie coming next summer.

  • Harry Potter Update!

    From the horse’s mouth!

  • The Art of the Saber

    [Gacked from SF Signal]

    The Art of the Saber, an excellent short movie I recommend to anyone who likes Star Wars.

  • Peter Jackson = LotR? Maybe…

    Three times in 12 hours, I’ve been spammed by a Save The Lord of the Rings post relating that only Peter Jackson could possibly do a movie based on The Hobbit.

    Obviously this took a bit of time to ramp up, because, as you can see from this website it’s been a week since The Announcement Of Impending Doom, that Peter Jackson will not be directing The Hobbit, according to New Line Cinema.

    Now, frankly, I don’t care about the spat between Jackson and New Line. They’ll figure it out, I’m sure. What I’m more concerned with is the assumption that only Peter Jackson has the vision, skill, knowledge, chutzpah, to do another Tolkien-based film. The underlying base to that assumption is that Jackson had the vision, skill, knowledge, chutzpah to do the first set of films. I personally don’t think he did that great a job holding to the vision of Tolkien.

    Oh, I’ll be one of the first to stand up and say that he produced three epic awe-inspiring, legend-setting, fan-base-swooning movies. They were cinematographic triumphs! As long as you don’t care about the various travesties he rendered unto J. R. R. Tolkien and his masterwork.

    As an avowed Tolkien afficionado, I liked The Fellowship of the Ring; I disliked The Two Towers; I despised The Return of the King. I acknowledge that there are corners that must be cut to turn LotR into a movie that is watchable in less than 15 parts, but some of the libertys taken were over the top. Peter Jackson entirely slew the character of Faramir, a crime that is unforgivable. The intransigence of Elrond was all wrong and the appearance of the elves at Helm’s Deep nearly killed me. Then of course, there was the entire Return of the King which had so little resemblance to the actual story, it doesn’t even bear mentioning.

    [sigh] Deep breaths…

    Back to the Question that everyone seems to be assuming the answer to: Is Peter Jackson the only person who could direct The Hobbit? I don’t think so. He did a ground-breaking series of movies, but The Hobbit won’t be the same, and studios won’t need to be shown that it will make money. So, if it doesn’t work out between New Line and Peter Jackson, I’m not going to wail. I’m going to expect them to go out and find someone who loves the books as much as Peter Jackson does, with their own vision, and make a great movie.

  • Frak!

    In case you don’t watch Battlestar Galactica, “Frak” is a tv-happy euphemism for F**K. There, now you’re more educated that you were.

    Never let it be said that reading the NY Times is without merit. How else would I have learned that there is a documentary entitled f**k out there. Ron Jeremy is interviewed. I need to go get in line right now…

    Here is a quote from the review article:

    I have been known to use the word in mixed company and even, I blush to admit, around my children — but only pedagogically, to call attention to the laxity of other drivers on family car trips. Never in front of the readers, though.

    From now on, I will cease to feel guilty if I say f**k in mixed company. I’m only doing it pedagogically.

  • Tenure: Denied!

    It pains me to publish that Dr. Jones’ application for tenure has been denied.