112 Pages Tagged “Fantasy”

• Reviews (52)
• Other (1)
• Blog Posts (59)

Reviews

• Agatha All Along ★★★★★ The best Marvel TV I’ve seen since the first seasons of Daredevil and Jessica Jones. Solid cast, with Sixth Sense-level twists that grow organically over the course of the show.
• The Bard’s Tale (reboot) ★★★☆☆ While I liked the attitude and metatextual humor, it was annoyingly linear when compared to the original series.
• The Bard’s Tale IV ★★★★★ This is the game Might and Magic IX wanted to be. A classic party-based quest in an immersively detailed world. Only, you know, playable. Plus amazing music!
• Beauty and the Beast (2010 Tour) ★★★☆☆ San Diego, 2012
  The simpler staging & costumes work well enough, but the big numbers suffer from the smaller cast.
• Beauty and the Beast (3D Theatricals) ★★★★★ Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, 2016
  An elaborate production by a local company with great performances from the leads, and a surprise understudy.
• The Beginning Place ★★★⯪☆ Ursula K. Le Guin
  More of an in-between place, a portal fantasy of people caught in liminal spaces and a quest that never quite makes sense to the two young adults pushed into it.
• Belle’s Dreams of Adventure I never thought Belle gave up her dreams of adventure. I figured she had one, and gained the opportunity to have more. That’s why I hate the song ‘A Change in Me.’
• Beowulf (in 3D) Impressive monsters and realistic animation. Better than 300, a bit reminiscent of the recent Lord of the Rings films.
• Chivalry ★★★★★ Neil Gaiman and Colleen Doran
  Beautifully drawn and illustrated, a charming tale of Arthurian legend brought into modern times.
• Conan the Destroyer ★★☆☆☆ The first movie holds up. The second tries too hard to fit in a PG rating and ends up as self-parody.
• The Daughter of Odren ★★★★☆ Ursula K. Le Guin
  A small, stand-alone tale set in Earthsea, reminiscent of the folk tales glimpsed throughout the series. Betrayal, revenge, kindness, and power - and just living.
• Doctor Strange ★★★★☆ Surrealism is the best part. Creative use of Escher gravity, portals, astral projection, time manipulation, incredibly detailed alterations to reality, and effects that make it all look incredible.
• Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness ★★★☆☆ Not as bad as I expected, but the alternate realities weren’t as fun as the reality-bending in the first movie. And there was way too much reliance on the Idiot Ball.
• Down Among the Sticks and Bones ★★★★★ Seanan McGuire
  Creepy tale of twins transported to a world out of 1930s monster movies. Hangs together better than the first book.
• A Dragon for William ★★★★★ Julie Czerneda
  A welcome return to the world of A Turn of Light (though shorter!)
• Dungeons & Dragons (2000 Movie) ★☆☆☆☆ So bad that the group of friends I was with started heckling the movie, and the rest of the audience joined in.
• Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves ★★★★☆ To my shock and surprise, this D&D movie was actually good!
• Earthsea (TV) Every once in a while I’m reminded of SyFy’s notoriously bad TV adaptation of Earthsea, and think, maybe I should watch it just once, like the Star Wars Holiday Special. This is not a review. This is why I still haven’t seen it.
• Edward Scissorhands ★★★★☆ The film still holds up: the fairy tale music, the contrast between ‘normal’ suburbia and Edward’s home, and the tension between appearances and heart.
• Every Heart a Doorway ★★★★☆ Seanan McGuire
  A fast read with an intriguing concept that reverses multiple YA fantasy tropes.
• The Farthest Shore ★★★★☆ Ursula K. Le Guin
  Magic is failing, and a young prince sails with the Archmage of Earthsea to seek out the cause and resolve the crisis. It’s my least favorite of the original trilogy, but that’s not a euphemism. It’s still quite good, and there’s so much in it worth reading.
• A Game of Thrones (Book) George R.R. Martin
  I should have liked this book. I tend to enjoy big epic fantasy, but I just couldn’t get into this one.
• The Gathering Storm (Wheel of Time Book 12) Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
  Events move rapidly toward the apocalypse foretold in book one, and Sanderson shows he was a good choice to finish Jordan’s series.
• Heroes of Might and Magic III ★★★★★ Possibly the high point in the turn-based strategy battle series.
• The High and Faraway (Trilogy) ★★★☆☆ Greg Keyes
  Not Keyes’ best work. Interesting concept and characters, but poorly edited and creepy (in a bad way).
• Illuminations ★★★★★ T. Kingfisher
  Madcap magical damage control in a family of eccentric artist-magicians. Fun like A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive baking, but with a tighter story and better-defined characters.
• The Illusionist For the first hour I couldn’t get past lead characters being colossally stupid, but the ending totally made up for it.
• The Last Unicorn ★★★★★ Peter S. Beagle
  Whimsical and melancholy tale of the last unicorn’s quest to find others of her kind. Well drawn characters and story, very much a classic.
• Might and Magic IX It’s interesting and immersive, but some of the game and UI design choices make it really frustrating.
• Minor Mage ★★★★☆ T. Kingfisher
  By turns melancholy and creepy, with a dash of sarcastic armadillo.
• New Spring (Comic Book) #1 The first issue of the New Spring comic book was surprisingly good.
• New Spring (Comics): The Long Publishing Saga It’s taken a long time (and three publishers) to complete this adaptation of the Wheel of Time prequel, even though it only covered eight standard-sized comic books
• Night Watch (Discworld) ★★★★★ Terry Pratchett
  Time travel, barricades and a mix of humor and darkness in a rebellion with good cops, bad cops and time monks.
• Nightmare Before Christmas (in 3D) ★★★★⯪ ILM remade the entire film in CGI, then shifted the virtual camera over for the second viewpoint. They match seamlessly. That said, 3D doesn’t add much to the original, but it doesn’t interfere either.
• Norse Mythology ★★★★☆ Neil Gaiman
  Entertaining, sometimes gruesome, sometimes funny and sometimes sad collection of stories about Odin, Thor, Loki and the other gods of Asgard.
• Pebble and Wren ★★★★★ Chris Hallbeck
  Hilarious and heartwarming tale of a girl and the monster who lives under her bed.
• People of the Crater ★★★☆☆ Andre Norton
  Standard fantasy rescue-the-princess adventure with sci-fi trappings, nodding vaguely toward Hollow Earth tropes.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End ★★★★☆ A lot of fun, if hard to keep track of all the double-crosses. Doesn’t require intimate knowledge of the previous films, just knowing who the major players are.
• The Sandman - Season One ★★★★★ The Sandman has been brought to life. And it’s amazing.
• Stardust (Movie) ★★★★★ Light-hearted fantasy adventure built around a love story, Stardust takes itself just a touch more seriously than The Princess Bride. Enjoyable on its own, and stays true to the heart of the book.
• Summer in Orcus ★★★★★ T. Kingfisher
  A portal fantasy that answers the questions: What kind of quest would Baba Yaga send an 11-year-old girl on, and how can she save a world anyway?
• Tehanu ★★★★★ Ursula K. Le Guin
  A character-driven look at the lives of ordinary people in a world of magic, especially the women and children (and not a few men) caught underfoot when wizards, heroes and villains fight. And (of course) dragons.
• Tin Man ★★★☆☆ The Wizard of Oz meets The Dark Crystal by way of 1930s scifi was fascinating as a concept, but they managed to make it dull and tedious.
• The Tombs of Atuan ★★★★★ Ursula K. Le Guin
  Still my favorite of the Earthsea books. There’s something fascinating about a labyrinth that you must traverse in total darkness, keeping a map and counting turns in your head.
• Tune in Tomorrow ★★★★☆ Randee Dawn
  A fun romp through backstage theater, mystery, soap opera, mythology, fandom and screwball comedy romance tropes. (whew!)
• The Wind that Sweeps the Stars ★★★★☆ Greg Keyes
  Betrayed by an empire, Yash has one night to assassinate as many magicians as possible, set in a fantasy world inspired by southwest indigenous American mythology.
• The Wind’s Twelve Quarters ★★★★⯪ Ursula K. Le Guin
  A collection of short stories from early in Le Guin’s career, spanning her first sale through the time when she’d begun to be recognized as a major force in the genre.
• A Wizard of Earthsea ★★★★★ Ursula K. Le Guin
  The Earthsea series is one of my regular re-reads. It starts here, with the tale of how a goatherd grew into a wizard in a world where magic is woven through everything from the poorest village to the greatest palace. How he released a terrifying evil in his youth, and how he sailed the world seeking how to make up for his mistake.
• A Wizard of Earthsea (Graphic Novel) ★★★★★ Ursula K. Le Guin and Fred Fordham
  Fordham’s watercolor-style art is absolutely gorgeous. The adaptation plays to the medium’s strengths, allowing the visuals to tell the story when possible, keeping Le Guin’s prose when needed. Wide seascapes, rocky coasts, forested landscapes, people (not whitewashed!) and dragons…
• A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking ★★★★★ T. Kingfisher
  A fun and original take on the teenage wizard genre. With an immortal carnivorous sourdough starter named Bob.
• The Word of Unbinding and The Rule of Names ★★★★☆ Ursula K. Le Guin
  The original two stories set in Earthsea, before Le Guin wrote the novels. Each stand-alone, each interesting both in itself and in seeing what the series and its themes grew from.
• Xanadu (Stage Musical) ★☆☆☆☆ Segerstrom Center, 2009
  The stage musical of Xanadu is a silly, self-aware parody that revels in its camp. I really liked about 10% of it. The rest, not so much.

↑Top

Other

• What the heck is a Hyperborea? When I bought a personal domain name back in 2000, I wanted a name from fantastical geography. Atlantis was waaaay taken.

↑Top

Blog Posts

• Ursula K. Le Guin eBook Bundle (Ended)

  Humble Bundle is offering 30 books* by Ursula K. Le Guin supporting the Literary Arts charity, including all of Earthsea, several Hainish novels, Catwings, short stories, Gifts/Voices/Powers, nonfiction writing… I’ve read the Earthsea series (good-to-great) and most of the Hainish novels (some great, some good, some OK), plus Lathe of Heaven (great), and I’ve got […]

  (Nov 2024)
• Mount Doomscrolling

  The way the Palantir network compromises Saruman and Denethor shows the danger in who controls the algorithm that manages your newsfeed.

  (Aug 2020)
• Going Mirrorless: WonderCon 2019 Cosplay Photography

  Last fall, I conceded that phones have caught up to casual cameras and I’d have to get a nicer one to get better image quality. Well, I finally bought a mirrorless camera. The kiddo found my old SLR, and we’ve split a few rolls of film (re)discovering how to shoot with it. Then he started […]

  (Apr 2019)
• A Gallery of Harry Potter Cosplay at WonderCon

  There was a lot of Harry Potter cosplay at WonderCon this past weekend! Here are some of my photos, featuring Bellatrix Lestrange, Hagrid, You-Know-Who, Professor Sybill Trelawney (who should look familiar to regular readers!), Hogwarts Professors Dolores Umbridge, Gilderoy Lockhart and Albus Dumbledore; Arthur Weasley, and Rita Skeeter. There are a lot more that I […]

  (Apr 2019)
• Professor Trelawney Cosplay at Long Beach Comic Con

  Katie’s been talking about dressing up as Professor Trelawney for a while now. She put together the pieces for a costume over the last couple of weeks, and wore them on Saturday at Long Beach Comic Con. It was a huge success! Lots of people recognized the character and wanted photos. We even ran into […]

  (Sep 2018)
• Dementors on the Train

  In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, when the Dementors search the Hogwarts Express, Professor Lupin derisively says that none of them in the compartment are hiding Sirius Black in their robes. But Ron has Scabbers in his robes, not knowing his “pet rat” is the actual murderer who committed the crime Black was […]

  (Jul 2018)
• They Didn’t Know What They Were Getting Into: the Woods

  A surprising number of people who reviewed the movie on IMDB didn’t know it was going to be a musical or a darker, complex take on the stories.

  (Jan 2015)
• Jack vs the Idiot Ball

  While Jack the Giant Slayer isn’t a great movie, it’s refreshing that the characters are never stupider than they should be, just for the sake of the plot.

  (Sep 2014)
• “Who puts a fountain in the middle of a library?”

  I was immediately reminded of the Huntington Beach Central Library when stumbling on this line in The Magician’s Land.

  (Aug 2014)
• The Shelves are Paved with (The Path of) Daggers

  The only books left from the Wheel of Time back catalog at the end of the sale were the three you might expect people to leave on the shelf.

  (Jun 2014)
• A Wicked Weekend

  Somehow I ended up listening to Wicked, watching Oz: The Great and Powerful, and catching up on Once Upon a Time…on the weekend of Emerald City Comicon.

  (Apr 2014)
• Vorlon in Wonderland

  The caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland is totally a Vorlon. He’s always asking “Who are you?”, has a short temper, speaks cryptically…

  (Jan 2014)
• What the M’Hael?

  Apparently in the First Age, Mazrim Taim sought power by running a craft store, rather than becoming head of the Asha’man.

  (Jan 2013)
• How The Hobbit Will (and Won’t) be Like the Star Wars Prequels

  A visionary director returns to his high-profile trilogy years later with a prequel in which some of the same characters establish key elements of the original backstory. Hmm….

  (Dec 2012)
• HP8

  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 was an impressive ending to the series…but what impresses me most is that it actually finished.

  (Jul 2011)
• Lord of the Rings as an “Event” Comic Book

  No doubt it would have tie-ins, side stories, spinoffs, and a bunch of extra tie-ins added to plug the inevitable gaps in the schedule.

  (Jun 2011)
• Comic-Con Quotes: Twisting Genres

  Authors China Mieville, Naomi Novik, Scott Westerfeld, Daryl Gregory and more discuss mixing things up with books that defy classification.

  (Jul 2010)
• Comic-Con Quotes: Epic Fantasy

  Fun quotes from fantasy authors Brandon Sanderson, Christopher Paolini, Patrick Rothfuss, Megan Whalen Turner, and Brent Weeks.

  (Jul 2010)
• A Day at Westercon 63: Confirmation

  Smaller than the typical media event that comic cons have become, Westercon provides a more literary approach to sci-fi and fantasy fandom.

  (Jul 2010)
• Myth-Quotations

  Myth Adventures, Phil Foglio’s comic-book adaptation of Robert Asprin’s fantasy/comedy novel, Another Fine Myth, is being serialized as a free webcomic [Edit: no longer available.], in the same format as Girl Genius. I remember spending a lot of effort tracking down the mid-1980s books on eBay, before they finally reissued the collection. The title of […]

  (Jan 2010)
• Crossover Names

  Have you ever run into a name that you can’t help associating with a completely different context? Like when people realize that one guy in Office Space is named Michael Bolton? Or when you look at “AD&D,” and instead of “Accidental Death and Dismemberment” your first thought is “Advanced Dungeons and Dragons?” Yeah. Especially in […]

  (May 2009)
• Wheel of Time Finale: 3-Book Split

  The last Wheel of Time book is so massive it’s being split into 3 volumes. I’m half annoyed, but it doesn’t surprise me that it needs that many pages.

  (Apr 2009)
• Waitaminute

  Listening to “Into the West” (end credits song from Lord of the Rings: Return of the King). Lyric, “Across the sea a pale moon rises.” It’s all about crossing the sea into the west to go to elf heaven. Presumably the speaker is standing at the Grey Havens, waiting for the ships to arrive and […]

  (Feb 2009)
• Conan the Scheduler

  Surprised to find no jokes online using the pun “Anvil of Cron,” just typos.

  (Nov 2008)
• Rambling On

  On the subject of filk, and trying to define it, there’s a whole subset of songs by professional musicians that just rides the edge. (Half of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s repertoire, for instance.) Twice in the last week I’ve heard Led Zeppelin’s “Ramble On,” which is apparently about Aragorn and Arwen from Lord of the Rings. […]

  (Jul 2008)
• Links, from the Astronomical to the Surreal

  The Value of Space Exploration, via Phil Plait. Neil Gaiman on The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke, a painting by a madman that’s inspired its share of stories. And from Comics Worth Reading, our WTF entry for the day: Paradise by the GoPhone Light. It’s a commercial done in the style of a music video, featuring […]

  (Apr 2008)
• The Born Queen

  We’ve both finished reading The Born Queen, the conclusion to Greg Keyes’ The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone. Yesterday we spent the day reading in tandem on the couch: I read book 3, Katie read book 4, and finished within an hour of each other. Determined to catch up, I read 100 pages last night […]

  (Apr 2008)
• The Race for Eslen

  After working my way through The Briar King in bits here and there, I made time for The Charnel Prince.  I finished the second book Tuesday evening, and I’m currently 100 pages into The Blood Knight. Meanwhile, I’ve been talking about the books (Greg Keyes’ The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone) a lot, trying not to drop spoilers in case […]

  (Apr 2008)
• No Time for the End of the World

  Well, my copy of The Born Queen has arrived via UPS, and I’m nowhere near finished re-reading the first three books of Greg Keyes’ The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone. I’d hoped to start at the beginning of March, but I was in the middle of the Trade Pact books and wanted to finish that […]

  (Mar 2008)
• Cataloging Worlds

  What’s the best way to catalog a fictional multiverse? Clear definitions, or fluid? Names or numbers? How do you choose the numbers?

  (Mar 2008)
• Completing the Series

  Yesterday I finally had time to finish reading To Trade the Stars, the final book in Julie E. Czerneda’s “Trade Pact Universe” trilogy. Now I’m ready to pick up The Briar King again, since the final book of Greg Keyes’ fantasy quartet, Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, comes out at the end of the month. […]

  (Mar 2008)
• Golden Compass, Tin Man

  Saw The Golden Compass. Enjoyed it a lot, though it felt very rushed, and I think it would have benefitted from having the actual ending instead of cutting it off early. Here’s hoping they do well enough in the long run to greenlight the next film. Now I can re-read the books. Also watched Tin […]

  (Dec 2007)
• Fantasy Feuds

  Epic Pooh – Michael Moorcock on the state of fantasy literature, originally written in the 1970s but updated for the 21st century. The title comes from comparing the style of Lord of the Rings to Winnie the Pooh. I have no problem reading and enjoying both his work and Tolkien’s, and it doesn’t bother me […]

  (Dec 2007)
• Temeraire Flies Again

  I just found out that Empire of Ivory, the fourth book in the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik, came out today! The series takes place in an alternate version of the Napoleonic Wars in which dragons exist, and are used in warfare. This results in an odd mix of naval battles and aerial dogfighting, with […]

  (Sep 2007)
• Spam from the Third Age

  I’ve held off on posting funny spam subject lines lately, but I just had to comment on this pair. First up: Mazrim Taim was one of those, raising an army and ravaging Saldaea before he was taken. It’s a quote from Lord of Chaos, the 6th book in Robert Jordan’s fantasy series, The Wheel of […]

  (Aug 2007)
• Waiting for the Wizard

  I walked over to the nearby Barnes and Noble at lunch just to see whether anyone was lined up for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

  (Jul 2007)
• Fantasy Film Follow-Up

  Saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I thought it was better than the fourth film, and up there with Prisoner of Azkaban, though Katie liked Goblet of Fire better. The main thing I would really have liked to see more of: Hogwarts in rebellion. “It unscrews the other way.” We agreed that […]

  (Jul 2007)
• 300 Thoughts

  I haven’t seen 300 yet. But not because I’m not interested in the story.

  (Apr 2007)
• Fantastic Films?

  2007 looks to be a good year for fantasy adaptations, at least of books I’ve read. What I’ve seen of Stardust (Neil Gaiman & Charles Vess) looks great. I’m psyched up for His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass (Phillip Pullman)—and I’ve got to say I’m glad they’re doing each book as its own movie, instead […]

  (Jan 2007)
• Offline in Crotheny

  Sorry I haven’t posted much here lately. The main reason is that I’ve been re-reading Greg Keyes’ Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series before picking up The Blood Knight. (I’ve also been spending time at the Comic Bloc Forums discussing the Flash relaunch.) Re-reading The Briar King and The Charnel Prince both followed the same […]

  (Aug 2006)
• Con Sundae

  Sunday at SDCC was, oddly, more crowded than Saturday. Maybe it was the desperation of the last day combined with the fact that it was still on the weekend. We got in later, closer to 11:30, since we spent the morning packing. I did a final round of back-issue hunting, and ended up not buying […]

  (Jul 2006)
• Variations on a Theme

  I read Shadowpact #2 last night. So far the book does read better than Day of Vengeance, probably in large part because Bill Willingham can set his own schedule instead of the must-be-6-issues policy of the Infinite Crisis lead-ins. One of the villains struck me as familiar, though: an albino swordsman with a magic sword, […]

  (Jun 2006)
• One Time-Turner to rule them all

  I keep calendars displaying both the current month and the next month up in my cube at work. I figured I’d better post this configuration before it stopped being what I got to look at every day.

  (Oct 2005)
• Serenity and MirrorMask: Worth the Wait!

  It’s refreshing when a movie you’ve anticipated for years actually lives up to your expectations. It’s unprecedented when it happens twice in one weekend.

  (Oct 2005)
• The Wheel Turns

  I finally talked myself into reading New Spring, the prequel novel to Robert Jordan’s interminable long-running Wheel of Time series. It’s actually a very interesting character study of young Moiraine, and much more engrossing than the last two books in the series have been—perhaps because I don’t expect it to advance the plot. Anyway, I’ve […]

  (Jun 2005)
• Neverwhere 3.0

  Also in comics news, the nine-part adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere begins in June. The basic premise is this: In urban areas, we tend to tune out the homeless to the point where we don’t even see them. What if we really don’t see them? What if there’s another world, just slightly out of sync […]

  (Mar 2005)
• Cancellations: Fallen Angel & B5

  Fallen Angel is ending with #20, and Babylon 5: The Memory of Shadows has fallen through. However, JMS has always said, “If they can do a Brady Bunch movie, you can be sure that sooner or later, somebody’s going to do a B5 movie.” Even better, it turns out that while Warner Bros. owns the […]

  (Feb 2005)
• Pining for the Fnords

  I’m about halfway through The Illuminatus! Trilogy, and the most apt description is, if you’ll pardon the language, a mindfuck. Once the writing settles into a coherent structure (or perhaps once the reader is attuned to it), the mind starts noticing connections. Everywhere. It’s as if it was written specifically to induce apophenia. The most […]

  (Jul 2004)
• MirrorMask Preview (SDCC 2004)

  Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean talked about MirrorMask and showed a clip from the fantasy film in the vein of Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal.

  (Jul 2004)
• Viewing the Impossible

  I knew someone once who had no interest in science-fiction, and dismissed it with “That could never happen.” That seems to be the mainstream attitude toward SF — try to pit Farscape against Survivor and you know exactly what will happen — and yet they love to see films about the impossible. (Well, as long […]

  (Jul 2004)
• Sorting the Leviathan

  I realized this morning what struck me as odd about the original crew of Moya: they’re not a crew, they’re a D&D party. Two warriors, a priest, a thief, and Ordinary Guy (who’d probably be classed as a bard). We started trying to categorize everyone else who shows up and realized that we’d need to […]

  (Jun 2004)
• Van Helsing: Complete and Total Mrifk!

  The Hugh Jackman/Kate Beckinsale movie Van Helsing was terrible, but I really enjoyed it. To explain why, I’ll need to introduce you to The Eye of Argon.

  (May 2004)
• Well, that sucks.

  Miss two weeks and they pull the rug out from under you: …the cast, crew, writers and producers of Angel deserve to be able to wrap up the series in a way befitting a classic television series and that is why we went to Joss to let him know that this would be the last […]

  (Feb 2004)
• Science Meets Fantasy: Wheel of Time genetics

  I’m beginning to understand why someone would jump out of a bathtub and go streaking through the streets with a fantastic new idea. Recently, in the shower, my brain decided it wanted to write a graphic novel. The day after, it worked out a genetic explanation of channeling in the Wheel of Time universe. If […]

  (Jan 2003)
• Fantasy vs. Science Fiction

  Over the last few weeks, I’ve seen a number of articles in places like Time Magazine about how popular culture is abandoning science fiction for fantasy, usually tying it into either pessimism about technology and the future (“Where’s my flying car!”) or nostalgia in a post-9/11 world. They generally cite the enormous success of Harry […]

  (Jan 2003)
• Second Look: The Two Towers

  OK, first I’d like to stress that I did like most of The Two Towers the first time through. It was mainly the non-ending that bugged the heck out of me, and that was the impression I was left with leaving the theater. I can say now that not only does the movie hold up […]

  (Jan 2003)
• Movie Review: Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

  A few months ago I read an article about filmmaking which talked about why the ending of a film is so important: it’s not just that the audiences want to see it come out a certain way, but the ending is the last impression the audience is left with. A film can be fantastic all […]

  (Dec 2002)
• Conan the (Musical) Librarian

  I’ve been meaning to pick up a copy of the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack for a while, but kept not finding it. A few weeks ago, we were listening to a copy of Holst’s The Planets we had just picked up. I’d heard the whole suite before, but had only heard “Mars” recently, so one […]

  (Oct 2002)
• Book Review: The Waterborn and The Blackgod

  J. Gregory Keyes has fast become one of those authors whose work I will pick up knowing nothing more than who wrote it. I enjoyed his work in the Babylon 5 and Star Wars universes, but after reading the four novels of The Age of Unreason and these two, I can say I’ll definitely be […]

  (Sep 2002)

• Search Blog
• Search Website