The Evil Eyebrow

Category: Fiction

  • On a Personal Note…

    Today marked several things, two of which I’ll mention:

    One, I ran farther than I’ve ever run before (at one time). I mentioned this last fall, but I’m training for another half marathon and today I ran 13.3 miles. Very exciting, for me, at least.

    Two, we went to see Doomsday at the theater today. Ugh, double ugh. I honestly have nothing good to say about it. I suppose I can state that it was gratuitously bloody, but that’s not a plus in my book. They randomly blew up a little bunny rabbit! Seriously, the movie was a bad compilation of several others including Road Warrior, Aliens, and Escape from New York. Do not see this movie at full, or any price. You have been warned.

  • David Weber Book for Sale

    I am a big fan of David Weber’s Honor Harrington Series, which is on book 11, with several side novels* and 4 short story anthologies.

    To the dismay of his Honor fans, Mr. Weber writes in other worlds than just that one. I think we’re on a two and a half year hiatus (something like that) since the last one was released. In the interim, rabid fans of his other work are slavering over another of his series, which has been getting most of his time. Book number two is being released in July, but if you’re really interested, you can go to ebay and bid on an Advance Readers Copy (ARC) of By Schism Rent Asunder which someone is selling. Current price, with one day left, $200.

    Crazy people. Mr. Weber’s books are good, and for genre readers they are a gold mine, but I don’t think they’ll ever be worth that much. And from the comments I’ve heard in various places, the people bidding on this book aren’t looking for a collectible, they merely want to read it 3 months early.

    Geeks with too much disposable income.

    3/16/08 Update: As of right now, the bidding is up to $270 with twelve hours to go. We’ll see what it does in the last 5 minutes.

    *Actually, in the Honor Harrington universe, the side novels are really parallel mainline novels that take a great deal of the political and other maneuvering out of the main novels and keep them to a reasonable page count.

  • Harry Potter 7 is to be Two Movies

    I saw on the newswire that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be broken up into two movies.

    “It was born out of purely creative reasons,” producer David Heyman told the Times. “Unlike every other book, you cannot remove elements of this book.”

    I call bullshit. There’s no reason they can’t perform the surgery on this movie that they’ve done on every other. The movie franchise only has the vaguest resemblance to the book storyline, so saying that they can’t remove elements is crap. It might be born of a desire to do the whole book, which I applaud, or it might be more for financial gain, which wouldn’t surprise me.

  • Sunshine

    We finally got around to seeing the movie Sunshine”. In two words: It sucked. I wasted another two hours of my life on overblown trash.

    I’ve been looking forward to seeing this movie for 8 months and boy was I disappointed. The physics made no sense. The spaceship made no sense. The mission (even though it was a MacGuffin) made no sense. To top it off, it ended up being a monster movie. I’ll give you the last three, but why why why can’t they do the physics right? It’s not hard! Really! I haven’t been so disappointed in the physics of a movie since Mission to Mars.

    Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. I now feel better about watching The Fountain, because at least that movie was supposed to be weird.

  • Children of Men: The Movie!

    This is such an old draft, I’m not sure why I never finished it. I watched this movie in October.

    Alert readers may recall that I read the P.D. James novel, Children of Men, last summer. I didn’t like it. See the link for why.

    Now, I’ve finally gotten around to watching the Movie that prompted me to read the book. I didn’t like it, but it was a good movie, I think.

    For one thing, it’s depressing as hell. I don’t really care for depressing movies, no matter how “quality” they are. Almost all of the major characters die (true to form from the book) but without the tragic majesty of Hamlet. Some of them die suddenly, some pointlessly, and some forseeably.

    For another thing, they flipped the bitch in the movie. In the book, it’s men who can’t father children. In the movie, it’s the women who are sterile. I’m not sure what that change was supposed to accomplish, except maybe the screenwriters agreed with my point from the earlier post that if a man was suddenly found to be fertile, go find him and get him to impregnate every single woman possible! Flipping that makes it much more about the pregnant woman, which lends to the drama.

    For a third thing…I’ve got no third thing. Did you read that note up above about how I sat on this draft for 4 months? Back in October I was all full of righteous fury; now, not so much.

    I wouldn’t watch this movie again, and I’d only recommend it to people who are interested in dystopian depressing movies. It’s not scifi in the sense that there’s any science fiction going on. The only SF bit is the assumption that every man is sterile, for some reason.

    But, that’s another movie off of my list of summer (2007) movies to watch. Maybe I’ll finish the list before 2009.

  • Lord of the Rings News

    I know I’ve been ignoring all of my normal blog sites when I have to get news like this through AP.

    Tolkien Estate Sues New Line Cinema.

    My geek card just lost a corner, I think.

  • Cloverfield

    Jenn and I saw Cloverfield last night. Rating, 4 stars (out of five).

    Firstly the things that bugged me: Buildings don’t lean against other buildings at the angles and heights that were shown in the movie. Also, if you’ve ever played the computer game “Half Life”, you’ll get some serious flashbacks while watching the film. Lastly, the hand-cam aspect of the film is a bit much at times for the eyeballs.

    Now, the things that were great! Back on the hand-cam filming: Despite the motion-sickness inducing jerkiness, the style of filming was perfect for what the filmakers were trying to accomplish. Our (the audience’s) point of view is from this one camera which is not omniscient; it isn’t in every place at the right time. We only get peeks of the monster as it rampages through Manhattan. If something is happening away from the viewpoint of the camera, we only hear noises and screams. This was well done, I think.

    More spoilery things beneath the cut
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  • I'm not an Oscar Guy

    2007 is a celebrated year for the Ruhsam in our household.

    Why?

    Because I managed to see almost none of the Oscar-nominated films. You have to go all the way down to … wait! The nominations have been yanked as I looked at them. How amusing. I guess someone published the website too early.

    Anyway, as I was perusing, I saw that the only movies I’d seen that had any nominations were Transformers (sound editing), Pirates of the Caribbean (Costumes? I forget exactlyMakeup), and there was one other I’m forgetting at the moment. I think it was for Makeup. the other one was The Golden Compass for Art Direction.

    So, basically, I don’t see Oscar films, apparently.

    I’d give you the scoop on what was up as I was looking at Best Actor/Actress and Best Film, but why not just wait 30 minutes and it’ll be back up.

  • Harry Dresden News

    Other than the fact that the next book in the Harry Dresden series will be coming out in April which I’m very much looking forward to, there a novella being published that features Harry’s older brother Thomas. Here’s a quote that is entirely sweet:

    I’m not Harry Dresden.

    Harry’s a wizard. A genuine, honest-to-goodness wizard. He’s Gandalf on crack and an IV of Red Bull, with a big leather coat and a .44 revolver in his pocket.

    According to the link, the special edition with the leather cover is already sold out, but I’ll look forward to the trade paperback anyway. I’m not a hardback book snob; I like softback.

  • "Save me Plz"

    Recent Escape Pod short strory, “Save me Plz” has been released as free fiction, accoring to SFSignal. It’s an interesting story. If you’re into gaming, or role playing, or both, I recommend reading it, or listening to the Escape Pod episode.