A Cult Classic Comes To DVD July 24!

After twenty years, The Monster Squad is going to be released on DVD on July 24 of this year. Fans of the movie had been screaming for this release for years, especially since the DVD format has become available.

The movie was previously released on a VHS format. However, at the time of that release, it was easier to get access to the right to reproduce the movie soundtracks. As collectors know, several television series (including The Profiler, which lost a whole episode due to the music problems, and delayed production on the Miami Vice season sets) have been affected by the music rights problems.

There was a lot of speculation about when The Monster Squad would be released on DVD the two similar related problems. No one knew exactly who owns the rights to Dracula, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein’s monster. Evidently the legal of world is especially dangerous to monsters because of no one was gonna let those guys out of the box.

For those of you who remember when the movie was released in 1987, you may remember loving it but if you remember it accurately you’ll also recall that it wasn’t all that good. It was camp. Pure unadulterated camp. And it made no excuses for being so. These were your father’s monsters twisted into a 1980s reality where kids were take charge kind of heroes who took no prisoners.

Almost since the time film was invented, of audiences have thrilled to the classic monsters. Of course, it wasn’t long before Dracula, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein’s creature lost their horrific sway over those audiences and became the butt of jokes. Abbott and Costello took on those legendary monsters, as did Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Those movies were played primarily as slapstick and farce.

But, those comedians for your father’s comedians as well. In the nineteen eighties, we needed our own comedians who were closer to our age. So screenwriter/director Fred Dekker and Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) teamed up to produce a kid movie that kidded their fearless young heroes of against these legendary evil villains.

Some of the young stars went on to have film crew careers, though none of them ever hit the big time.

Before The Monster Squad was released, Steven Spielberg hit box office gold with a simple kid-driven movie called The Goonies. Spielberg proved you didn’t have to have star power in a movie that would appeal across the board to kids and adults if you had a story that kids would learn to love and adults never the love of.

The Monster Squad is exactly the same kind of story. Every kid who has heard about Dracula, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein’s monster has secretly wondered how he or she would deal with those scary creatures if they ever confronted them. And adults have never forgotten wondering the same thing when they were that age.

The story is amazingly simple. A group of kids declaring themselves to be the Monster Squad encounter Dracula and his minions as the evil vampire puts his plans in motion to take over the town where the kids live. As luck would have it, and luck always figures into these kinds of stories, the leader of the Monster Squad discovers Abraham Van Helsing’s journal that describes how to banish the monsters. Even with directions though, the job isn’t easy. Thankfully watching the action takes place on the big screen was a real knee-slapper.

The kids in the film aren’t superheroes. They’re just kids in the wrong place at the wrong time, but who won’t give up when the going gets tough. This is Scooby-Doo live-action before that was done, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer before Joss Whedon got that series up and running.

It would be interesting to know if The Monster Squad had an effect on the formulation of Buffy. In the movie, the kids have to have the help of an older man who can read and interpret the journal so that they know what to do. The man doesn’t fit in with the rest of the town has always been thought of as “odd”. Hmmm, Rupert Giles, anyone?

The Monster Squad is releasing as a special two-disc collection that offers the trips, deleted scenes, audio commentaries, and an interview back-in-the-day with Tom Noonan, who played the Frankenstein’s monster in the movie. As a bit of trivia, Tom Noonan had just played one of the scariest monsters in celluloid history when he starred as Francis Dollarhyde, a protégé of Hannibal Lector, in Manhunter, the original Hannibal the Cannibal movie.

I’m looking forward to this movie, and I’m especially looking for it to watching it with my nine year olds. He’s the perfect age for this bit of nostalgia from my own younger years.

SoonerCon

I went to SoonerCon this weekend to see my good buddy Keith Birdsong (in the red shirt above). Many of you may recognize his name from all the Star Trek covers he did for Pocket Books on the novels. Others of you may remember him from the postage stamps he did that featured Olympic athletes and American Indian fancy dancers. He's done a ton of stuff throughout the years and we've been best of friends since 1991 when we met and he asked me, "Do you want to hear a joke?"

Keith has since been telling me jokes for years. Regretably, many of them are the same ones. On the positive side, it's always a blast listening to Keith tell them.

Oscar Ray (in sunglasses proclaiming "star" quality) is co-founder of Muskogee's film school Dark Wood Film Arts Institute (http://www.darkwoodfilmarts.org/). Oscar was a wild man at Saturday night's dance. But he was just getting ready to star in a stage production of "The Full Monty" in Muskogee, so this was just a warm-up!

That grinning, handsome young man standing near me is my son Chandler. This was only his second con and he had a blast. He's ready to go again.

I picked up a new digital camera this weekend, so I'm going to try to liven up the posts on this blog. I've mastered the technology.

Wii Gaming Console Puts "We" Back In Family Gaming!

The true battle of the gaming consoles began months before last Christmas. Beginning about October, and definitely by Black Thursday – the Friday shopping day after Thanksgiving, television, newspapers, and every advertising medium were filled with articles and advertisements for the new gaming consoles coming out just in time to put under the Christmas tree.

The gaming console picked to attract the most attention immediately was the PlayStation 3. It touted the Blu-ray player that was part of the standard equipment, and that Blu-ray player was supposed to be the feature that crushed all other game consoles. Unfortunately, the PlayStation 3 – like its predecessor and the original Xbox and Xbox 360 – was underproduced. Supposedly the problem was in the blue diode chip that enabled the Blu-ray player to work. As a result, there were simply not enough PlayStation 3 units produced to fill every Christmas stocking.

The Xbox 360 came out the Christmas before. It, too, was underproduced and ended up inspiring a whole new generation of campers that took up the sport outside Walmart, Costco’s, and other electronic outlet stores around the United States. The price tag of the PlayStation 3 was exorbitant, as was that of the 360 when it first broke.

But the same time Nintendo released its new game system called simply Wii. At $250.00 per unit, buying a Wii seemed like a no-brainer, except that people were getting wooed in by the wowser graphics offered by the PlayStation 3. But the lack of PlayStation 3 units caused a run on the Wii at Christmas that has taken months to level off.

I had been looking for a Wii since before Christmas and finally scored one at a Best Buy in May. My eighteen-year-old and I had been diligently calling the local retail stores trying to nail one down. We even called in favors from some of his friends who worked at those places to find out about incoming shipments. The problem was, those incoming units generally disappeared as soon as they hit the floor. No one would hold one back. And you couldn’t buy one over the Internet. Not even from Amazon.

We got up bright and early on a Sunday morning and hauled butt down to the local Best Buy to grab a unit seconds after it was put out. My wife thought we were crazy. My son and I thought we were mission to rescue the Holy Grail. My nine-year-old came with us. It was his first time for such foolishness and he had a blast. After we got the unit, we hit the game shelves. Everybody got something.

Of course, Dad got the bill.

At home, we hooked the unit up to the 42-inch television in the living room and proceeded to play. The games were broken out and passed around. Then we chose up lots to see who got to play first. Everybody got to play for a little while. Even when we weren’t playing our games, we all sat around watching everyone else play their game. Of course, we made comments on the player’s form. Unfriendly comments that beggared gross retribution when our own time came to play.

Admittedly, I felt like an idiot waving the controller around. If someone had been looking through the window, I feel certain that the onlooker would have believed he was tuned into Discovery Channel and was watching a presentation involving tribal rituals and the sacrifice of small animals. There’s just no way to look cool while playing a Wii.

The controller is incredibly easy to use. All the new games made for the Wii are already coded to respond to the wireless controller’s motions. Button use is even at a minimum so you don’t get the sore thumbs you normally get with console systems. Whatever the programming is that allows the motion sensitivity to work with the games is amazing. In addition to the primary wireless controller, there’s also another wireless controller that plugs into it called the nunchuk. Using different configurations of these two devices allows for many permutations of movements.

Since we got the Wii right at the end of school, we had time to play on the weekends and often used it as a stress reliever in the evenings. For the first time a long time, we were all gathered around the television and a gaming console. Over the years we’ve played board games and card games, but there is nothing like playing video games together or providing moral support during a hard-fought campaign. Every victory is celebrated together, and every defeat is never alone.

The Wii package we got came with a collection of sports games. The collection includes boxing, golf, bowling, tennis, and baseball. We had more fun, and more laughs, playing those games together than we did playing our individual games with support.

I fault the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 for not making more family-oriented games. They just don’t bring families together the way Nintendo games always have. Of course, I have to give it up to the graphics that are available on those two games systems. Nothing short of a PC matches up to them.

But the bottom line is while the 360 and the PlayStation 3 look beautiful, they just don’t put families together the way the Wii does. Not only is the price tag significantly cheaper, but if you’re a family that loves to play games together, the Wii is the best way to go because there are more multi-player games that are age-friendly from parent to child.

Joe Hill Scores Big With His First Novel!

Joe Hill is a pseudonym. Most everyone, editors and the book-reading public, know that he’s actually Stephen King’s son. It was never a well-kept secret except when he was doing award-winning short stories. His skill as a writer, a good writer, was a better kept secret because as everyone knows very few short story writers really get a lot of notice.

All that changes with the publication of that new writer’s first novel if he or she hits one out of the park. Joe Hill has done exactly that with his first book.

The premise of Heart-Shaped Box is deceptively simple. It sucked me right in. Imagine in this day and age of being able to buy anything and everything on-line that you could buy a ghost. What kind of ghost would you get? A chain-rattler? A friendly ghost?

More than likely, you wouldn’t get what you were planning on. And if the characters had in the novel, the excitement and borrowed fear would never have kicked in.

Even with a premise like this, I wasn’t convinced that Joe Hill, no matter whose son he was, could pull off an entertaining story. Even with the legacy and the premise, I put off getting the book for a while.

And for time, while reading the novel, I wasn’t convinced I’d spent my money wisely. Of course, book readers aren’t so much worried about the money they spend on a book as much as they are the time they spend on a book. I just don’t get that many free evenings to read, and each one is precious to me.

Hill’s prose flows smoothly but he didn’t seem to be going anywhere very fast at the beginning of the book. I got bored from time to time and just wished he would get on with the story. To make matters worse, I didn’t like his main characters.

Judas Coyne, called Jude by his friends, is an aging rock-and-roller whose days on a stage are gone. He’s in his early fifties and has become pretty much a social cripple. He’s not interested in meeting people anymore and he has all the money he needs. The only thing they gets him up in the mornings is his dogs.

But it’s during this early section that I found out how horrible Jude’s life was when he was a child. How it had shaped him. I understood why he was the way he was, but I still didn’t really care. He didn’t have anything to prove to himself, and he didn’t have anything to prove to me.

It wasn’t until his personal assistant bought the dead man’s suit on eBay that the story really started picking up the pace and getting more interesting. The menace was there, lingering on every page, but not really picking up the momentum for a while.

During this time, the reader also discovers that Jude has a live-in lover that’s half his age and appears to be every bit as emotionally damaged as he is. Jude calls her Georgia, but her name is really Mary Beth. She was a stripper and a band groupie when Jude found her. Their relationship is tempestuous and rocky.

But the ghost of Craddock McDermott quickly terrorizes and unites them. The ghost was the stepfather of another young woman that Jude took as a live-in lover. He called that young woman Florida, but her real name was Anna. What Jude discovers is that Anna slit her wrists in the bathtub and committed suicide after he made her go back home.

Anna’s sister, Jessica, sold the suit on eBay to set the trap for Jude. Jessica and her dead stepfather blame Jude for Anna’s death. Craddock McDermott has come back from the grave for vengeance.

Even with the hook set and knowing that Jude was facing the worst thing that ever happened to him in his life, the interest level for the novel had not peaked for me. It wasn’t until Jude and Mary Beth got on the road and tried to outrun the ghost that things really started get interesting.

At first all the action seemed to be merely rote. The things that Jude did would be expected of anyone trapped in the same fictional situation. However, somewhere in there Jude and Mary Beth came alive to me. They weren’t merely dysfunctional people anymore. They became people I cared about because they started to care about each other. Once that happened, everything mattered.

That change in my opinion is indicative of the level of writing that Joe Hill is capable of. As a young writer I think he deliberately gave his readers characters they wouldn’t care about, people that most readers with felt were unworthy of the time they spend with them, just so he could redeem them. He twisted all those views and those negative feelings into something strong and passionate. That’s the writer’s gift, and is probably what he picked up from the best of his father’s books.

Heart-Shaped Box makes a lot of familiar moves to confirmed horror readers. But that’s the author just making sense within the fictional story. The writing may feel a trifle overdone, but Hill’s prose builds atmosphere and narrative tension in the latter half of the book that makes the story just sing along at a frenetic pace.

If Hill hadn’t taken the time with the characters in the first half of the book, I wouldn’t have cared as deeply about them by the end. Too many times writers depend on action to carry a story forward. Hill depends on characters to carry the story forward.

If you’re one of the readers that bought the book expecting Stephen King, then put the book down and didn’t finish it, I really advise you to go back and put the time in to at least read a little while longer. You’ll be rewarded for the time and effort.

Although the book could be considered beach material, I think you’ll find the beach will seem a little more desolate and a little more chilly while you’re turning pages. And if you make the mistake of staying up late to finish this novel, you might use find yourself reading while pulling the covers up to your chin and sleeping with the light on well after you’re done.

I’m looking forward to Joe Hill’s next book. As it is now, I’m going back and picking up some of his short story collections. This is definitely a young new writer to watch.

The New Sunny Randall Novel Is On The Shelves This Week!

Robert B. Parker’s sixth Sunny Randall mystery novel is one of his most introspective yet. The hook is very well set, opening up with Sunny and her retired father going over a cold case that he never quite solved while he was with the Boston Police Department. Phil, her father, was troubled by the case for several years before he retired. Nicknamed the Spare Change Killer because he left spare change – usually a nickel, dime, and quarter – at each murder scene, Spare Change hasn’t struck in almost twenty years.

No one knows what has brought Spare Change out of retirement, or why he or she started killing all those years ago. As lead homicide investigator from the initial investigation, Phil Randall is brought back on to consult. Martin Quirk, longtime permanent fixture of Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series, holds down a serious cameo role in the book and once again shows that Parker’s world are not as divergent as readers might believe.

The theme of this novel, and several of Parker’s books do have themes that are often repeated with different twists, centers on family relationships and how those family relationships affect and change the individuals within them. Susan Silverman returns as Sunny’s counselor and often serves as a foil for both Sunny’s personal growth.

The pace of the story is quick and eventful. Bodies fall quickly, and the police react almost hopelessly. In a round up at one of the latest murder scenes, Quirk and his people get a list of names up of people who happen to be in the neighborhood are passing by at the time the body was discovered. Then they begin a painstaking and grueling interview process that Sunny and Phil take part in.

Almost immediately Sunny identifies a man she believes is the culprit. His name is Bob Johnson and he’s an innocuous man who has no prior convictions or seemingly any reason for killing anyone. Yet he stands out to Sunny because he is flirtatious, chatty, and too arrogant while taking part in the interview. Quirk and her father aren’t as quick about making that decision. They want more information.

Sunny gets more information by breaking into Bob Johnson’s home. This is Parker’s tried-and-true detective method that is repeated in several of his novels. The mystery of the killer’s identity isn’t as mysterious war involving as it could be. Instead, Parker works his magic around his characters.

I loved the candid shots of Sunny’s family at home and at dinner. If these people didn’t dine at your house, you at least knew people like them. Longtime readers of the series get more insight into why Sunny wasn’t able to remain married to Ritchie, her ex-husband. It isn’t all that revealing to see this in action, but it is heartfelt and real.

This introspective analysis of Sunny plays largely into the history of Spare Change. Family and the sense of belonging within the family resonate within the story. Ultimately family issues are the reasons why everything is done by everyone involved. Sunny sees that in her father and comes to realize how much that dynamic is a part of her life and world as well.

As always, Parker delivers the kind of story he sets out to tell. Over the years he’s built a large and faithful audience for all of his characters. I pick up the books every time they come out just for the chance to sit down with an old friend and see how he or she has been. The books aren’t cutting edge or even really surprising these days, but they are dependable and offer some insight into my life in the world of large. That doesn’t mean I agree with everything Parker has to offer, but I do enjoy his characters and storytelling.

Spare Change is a great beach read or a book for one of those lazy rainy afternoons. If you’re a fan, you can curl right up with this one and be at home within minutes.

Jack Reacher Is Back Just In Time For The Beach In An Elegant Revenge Novel!

Revenge novels are always among the top of my Must-Read list. The excitement of a well-written book with a dangerous hero shoved in the underdog’s role and up against impossible odds hooks me every time. Throw in a great character with a – mostly – realistic history and abilities and I’m a happy guy.

For the last few years, Lee Child has been writing about a character named Jack Reacher. Reacher is an awesome hero, not only is he incredibly physical (6’5” tall and 250 pounds), but he’s also canny as a fox, something of a savant when it comes to numbers, and has a near-photographic memory for people and places. Oh, and then there’s the personal radar system that signals him whenever he’s on dangerous ground.

After leaving his military career, Reacher has become something of a vagabond near-do-well. He hasn’t ever married, never had children, doesn’t own a house, and doesn’t even have a driver’s license. He has a habit of getting on buses and just letting them take them wherever they’re going. Footloose, fancy-free, and always in trouble. He works just enough to get by. The only things he owns these days is a folding toothbrush, and – as a result of the 9/11 crisis – a passport and an ATM card.

The novels are always over the top when it comes to plot and action, but Child writes them so well that if the characters were real and the situations were true, fans just know this is how it would be.

Bad Luck And Trouble is the eleventh Reacher novel and just came out in hardcover. The other ten are all in paperback. Child is so good that he’s moved onto my hardcover buy-list because I don’t want to wait a year for the paperback. It takes a lot to make that list because space in my house is at a premium. He’s already working on his twelfth Reacher novel, Play Dirty.

When Reacher was a military policeman ten years ago, he headed up a special team of eight trained investigators. Their jobs then had been to catch the bad guys – murderers, black marketers, con artists, and runaways – that operated within the United States Army. Over the two years the unit was together, they went up against some true hardcases and put their lives on the line nearly every day. Back then, they’d had a motto: “You don’t mess with the special investigators.”

That motto became a lifeline for them. No one was allowed to attack any member of the unit without the other seven taking part. During those two years, they’d covered each other’s back through a number of close calls – against bullets and against commanding officers who hadn’t cared for their investigations. They’d never lost anyone.

Now someone had killed one of them. Reacher and the survivors of the unit get together for one more special investigation, and their whole mission is to rock and roll the killer’s world.

I loved the whole revenge concept, and Child starts the action off with a cinematic murder. A man is loaded onto a helicopter, flown out into the Nevada desert a short distance from Las Vegas, and dropped three thousand feet to his death. Later we find out this was to strip all forensic evidence from the body. (It’s an interesting idea, but I’ll have to do the research on that one to find out. I’m something of an amateur forensics person.)

Immediately Child shifts to Reacher, who has just discovered that someone has deposited $1030 into his bank account. After a little bit of headwork, Reacher draws the conclusion that someone has sent him a message. He knows it could only have come from his old crew. A 1030 call signified that an agent was in trouble.

Child’s writing has always been economical. He’s never used six words when five would do. Or one. His plotting is quick and tight, and if you don’t pay attention you’re going to miss something. He is, by turns bashing the reader with action and subtle about character interaction, history, and back story for the plot. Everything matters in his books, and he uses everything he develops.

Bad Luck And Trouble is written so lean and frantic that I read it in two sittings. Since the book is almost 400 pages long and has smallish print, that was a lot of reading. Several hours, in fact. But Child kept me nailed to the seat because I could never quite put the book down once he had it up and running. I finally passed out with it on my chest at night, then got up the next morning and finished it.

Child doesn’t write books that let facts or reality get in the way. He stays close to the bone in those areas, but he’s an excellent thriller writer and knows when to trust his instincts and let the story have its head no matter how wild it gets. He’s also got a great grasp of Reacher and the other characters, because even though this is thriller material, all of the old unit came to life on the pages.

With its June release, Bad Luck And Trouble is an excellent beach read. It’s got short chapters, short scenes, and terse clean writing with a plot that never breaks stride.

Holly Lisle's New Paranormal Romance Thriller Delivers The Goods!

Holly Lisle started out her writing career with fantasy novels. However, lately she’s turned her hand to paranormal suspense novels and become quite successful and quite well-known at them. She also manages her personal web site (http://www.hollylisle.com/) regarding her career, a personal dialogue with fans and interested parties, and offers tip sheets and essays on the craft of writing. Fans wanting to know more about her and her work are encouraged to visit the site, as are budding writers.

Her first novel paranormal romance, Midnight Rain and her last, I’ll See You, had more violence inherent in the plot than the current book does, but her fourth book, Night Echoes, is more a southern gothic and ghost story. In all of her books, Lisle manages to present interesting characters in the interesting situations, all with an economy of language that keeps readers turning pages. Lisle has such an easy touch with prose that it’s hard not to just keep reading way past bedtime. The pages seem almost to turn themselves.

In Night Echoes, commercial artist Emma Beck buys an old Civil War-era house in South Carolina that she has ties to she has no explanation why. When she sees the house, she realizes that she’s dreamed about it and painted it several times in her artwork. The author works this story with a slow burn, layering in character and building tension at a steady pace.

Emma was adopted by her parents. Before he died, her father gave her the name of her birth mother. Her father had hired a private detective to track the information down in case Emma ever needed to know. It was that search for the background on her mother and why she was given up for adoption that led Emma house that she buys almost on impulse.

The story picks up after Emma has been living in the house for a few days and is still moving in. She’s also met Mike Ruhl, the contractor who did minor repairs on her house before she moved in. There are immediate sparks between Emma and Mike that leave no doubts about who the romance will concentrate on.

Lisle presents her character and a very human fashion and gives her a detailed background that allows the reader to get to know her very well. But it isn’t long before Emma becomes embroiled in trying to find out more about her birth mother. The story she gets almost breaks her heart. Her mother was sixteen when she gave birth to Emma. The father betrayed her and left her alone and pregnant and at the mercy of her cruel father.

However this isn’t the only story that Emma is told. The prevailing story is that the baby died, which means that she can’t be that baby. But everything she finds leads her to believe that she is, and she feels that she is.

The book doesn’t really offer anything new to the experienced gothic/ghost story reader. Those who have read in the genre before will easily keep pace with Lisle’s twists and turns. Still, this is a well-crafted novel and the characters are pleasure to explore and journey with. The first three books Lisle wrote offered action and surprises. Night Echoes jogs along at a comfortable pace and delivers a satisfying ending that doesn’t really come as a shock or surprise. While the novel may not build on the momentum of the previous three, it offers a diversion into a different style of writing and an old style ghost story that most of today’s readers haven’t seen in some time.

Readers who want something to take to the beach and vege out with will enjoy this novel a lot. And Holly Lisle’s growing fan base will enjoy yet another winner.

A Great Field Guide For The Young Dragon Watcher!

Longtime fans of Dungeons and Dragons will recognize all of the dragons included in this slim, elegant manual. Those of us who began playing back in the 1970s know these dragons by heart. However, we've never seen the material presented in this way.

My son and I read together all the time. We enjoyed a lot of fantasy novels, including the Harry Potter books, and he gets totally captivated by imaginary creatures. Last night, while perusing the new releases, my son discovered this book. The first time I noticed that he had it Was when I realized how quiet it had gotten. Though he enjoys reading books with me, he doesn’t necessarily enjoy watching me look through the racks. He’s nine, so he can fold up and sit on the floor anywhere.

Last night he was folded up reading this book. When I asked what he was looking at, I could see the excitement in his eyes when he showed me this book. I recognize that immediately as Dungeons and Dragons material, but the usual TSR and/or Wizards of the Coast Logos were nowhere to be seen. I looked at the publisher and realized it was Mirrorstone, an offshoot of the Wizards of the Coast publishing arm that directs books at young readers.

My nine year old loves read about animals. I don’t know how many times he’s come home and told me about animals he’s read about and school. If he’s not a zoologist, then he’s going to be well-educated when it comes to animals.

Even imaginary ones!

The book is wonderful to look at. I flipped through the pages with him and talked about the times I had played Dungeons and Dragons and had to fight to the death against some of these creatures. Of course, he was mortified that I would even think about killing dragons. I tried to explain that some of them were evil and some of them had gold and treasure I wanted. He told me that dragons were entitled to their homes and that I was greedy. I didn’t even bother to explain about experience points. I could only imagine my son’s character getting charred and someone’s campaign while trying to save dragons.

The pictures in the book are colorful and vivid, and printed on what looks like parchment paper. The combination gives the book the look of an illustrated manuscript. It’s an oversized hardcover that looks like it can take years of love and punishment. (With children, love and punishment for favorite toys often cannot be separated.)

After we got home, my son continue to look at the book for over an hour, reading through the sections he got interested in. He came to me and ask the questions about dragons, testing my knowledge. I surprised him by knowing most of them, their breath weapons as well as whether or not they were good or evil. He told me he would study the book for a while, then I could test him.

Finding a book that totally entertains a child and immerses their imagination in another world is hard to find. Especially one there willing to pursue on their own. The language in the book is suitable for an aggressive second grader to read independently. The pictures will also inspire the budding young artist.

If you’re looking for a unique gift for a birthday party, a book to take on long family trips, or something that won’t get read once and simply filed away, I think you’ll find A Practical Guide To Dragons is a great book to entertain a young imagination over and over.

US cover version

Britsh Cover Version

Alex Rider, Teen Spy, Returns In 7th Thrilling Adventure On November 13!

Anyone who hasn't discovered this series by Anthony Horowitz needs to get with the program. These books are thrilling and entertaining, and filled with spy gadgets. Not only that, but Horowitz's writing crosses over splendidly for adults and kids alike, making this series one you can share with your kids by reading to the young one or handing them off to your teens.

Alex Rider is a 14-year-old spy pressed into service by his country. For all his life he's been trained to become a spy, but until his uncle Ian was murdered and he went looking for answers, he never knew that. Now that he does know that, he's not particularly happy about it, but he meets challenges and opponents head-on.

Last year there was no new Alex Rider book in England. In the past, the books have always been published one year earlier than in the United States. I guess it just took us a little while longer to catch onto a good thing. As of this year, the further adventures of Alex Rider will be published at about the same time internationally. According to the schedule, the British fans of Alex Rider will get their release eight days earlier than the US November 13 street date.

Alex is a reluctant spy at best, but he's tremendously physical and intelligent. Not just in book smarts, but in street smarts as well. Since his job generally is to survive, he's become quite adept at that.

The books carry a strong flavor of the 007 brand. The villains are all incredibly over-the-top and the fate of the world -- or at least a good portion of it -- is always at stake. And the gadgets! You'd never catch James Bond carrying a yo-yo that doubles as mountain climbing gear. The action is also top-notch, with martial arts mayhem thrown in with extreme sports.

The first book, Stormbreaker, has even come to the big screen in Operation: Stormbreaker and is now out on DVD. It's a fun show that parents and kids alike can watch and enjoy. It's along the lines of Special Agent Cody Banks.

Anthony Horowitz, the writer and creator of Alex Rider, has written books and television scripts. He's also known for his Diamond Brothers Detectives series, the current Power of Five fantasy series (known as the Gatekeepers series in the US), and several horror and mystery books.

He also created the BBC mystery series, Foyle's War set in England in the early years of World War II, and written for Midsomer Murders, Robin of Sherwood, Poirot, and others.

One Trick Too Many

I have to admit to being disturbed by The Prestige on some basic levels. Chief among them is that nowhere in the trailer was there any mention of going beyond real world physics. Nor did we get an accurate view of the characters because some really important details were left out.

When the trailer first started playing in the theaters, I was really looking forward to it. I saw Edward Norton’s The Illusionist first and really enjoyed it, though it too had a bit of a meandering problem due to the nature of the conflict. Both films are really small in some ways, microcosms in the world that depend largely on interior story and suffering on part of the characters. Those are good aspects of story, but these were magicians. I simply wanted more and bigger magic. I really wanted more explanation of the tricks period magicians did at the time in The Prestige.

The movie is based on the book by Christopher Priest. Priest is a horror/SF novelist. I have to admit to being pretty much pulled along by the story and the dark natures of the characters as well as the rivalry they followed until the final frames of the movie. Unfortunately, I'd figured most of them out and generally ended up asking myself, why?

When Angier’s wife was dropped into the water tank, I knew things were going to end badly. Even prepared for it, though, the gritty realism of the scene was hard to take. Jackman, Bale, Caine, and Johansson delivered standup work in their roles, but they were empty of some real resolution to a degree. Overall, the characters were paper-thin in the finished product and lacked enough flesh and bones to make me care about them much. I was more concerned with how the illusion was being done and what Angier was doing in Colorado trying to talk to Nikolai Tesla. Once I had that figured out, I was done with the film to a large extent. Without true character development, all that was left to see was the trick.

The sets and the period piece work were all extremely well done. I felt like I was in Victorian England and in Colorado Springs during those parts of the movie. I watched the movie on Blu-ray and the scenes were gorgeous. They were so clear and vivid I felt like I was standing on the street corner or had a seat in the theater where the shows were playing. The high-def format is absolutely the way to go for the discriminating home theater connoisseur.

However, the three storylines that constantly looped and interwove were really much more effort than should have been required for the payoff I received as a viewer. I know that it was necessary to make all the surprises work, but they still made the story more convoluted than it should have been. The Prestige is a good movie. People who haven't seen anything like it will love it. Anyone who loves Christopher Nolan's films (Memento, Batman Begins) will enjoy this one. And there enough historical references to please the armchair historian. Definitely a good film to watch with a group that likes to puzzle things out as they watch a film in the privacy of their own home so they won't disturb other paying viewers who don't like ruminations while watching.

At the World's Edge--And BEYOND!

Walt Disney Studios and Jerry Bruckheimer touched gold with Johnny Depp in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. That one has been retitled with The Curse of the Black Pearl added to it to set it apart from the other two movies in the, thus far, trilogy franchise.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End debuted in theaters on May 25 and went on to rake in $58 million on the first day. With a long Memorial Day weekend in the offing, the latest film should haul in the swag, matie!

At more than two and a half hours of viewing time, fans are definitely getting their money’s worth in volume. However, there are some quality concerns. The plot is full of betrayal and alliance switching, some conflicting agendas, dropped plot lines, and rabbits out of a hat.

The second movie introduced a proposed romantic triangle between Jack, Elizabeth, and Will that just didn’t really get followed up on in this movie. It’s still there, but it’s like the writers found out a lot of the fans hated the idea of the triangle springing up out of nowhere (because it wasn’t alluded to in the first movie in any way) and decided to pull it out of the third movie.

Furthermore, the Brethren of Pirates bearing the nine pieces-of-eight (which jarred every time someone mentioned it) was never given any real weight in the first movie, then it had everything to do with the third. The history of the binding of Calypso came out of nowhere, and she appropriately vanished into the same thin air when she left.

The history between Davy Jones and Calypso was pretty good, but it felt like the story was woven into the pre-existing history of the second movie. (I’ve gotta check my Blu-ray discs of the second movie when it comes in to see if Calypso really wore the heart pendant that figured into this movie so prominently.) Then that story line just fell off the edge of the world at the end when, after such a big build-up, there should have been a bookend to finish it off.

The plot convolutions got to be hard to follow, and the constant switching of sides became a headache, though it played out well in the end. I had to work harder at this movie to stay up to speed, which is fine except that I’d earmarked it as a fun, casual movie where I could watch Johnny Depp pull off once more one of the most interesting characters to grace the movies in years.

One of the British Navy men said of Jack Sparrow, “Do you think he plans all this out, or just makes it up as he goes along?” Or words to that effect. I couldn’t help but feel that way about the script. It was all well done, but some of it seemed to be plotting and twists of convenience.

It also got hard to latch onto the emotions of the characters because of all the shifting. There were so many storylines involved that it was all I could do to focus on keeping up rather than how the characters were doing and how they felt. Emotional turmoil for me as a viewer seemed almost to be an afterthought.

But the characters are wonderful. The actors and actresses obviously had a great time showcasing this insane and exciting world again. When Jack Sparrow was talking to himselves, and commanding himselves, on The Black Pearl in Davy Jones’s Locker, it was hilarious. But there was something missing. Sparrow works much better when he has others as an audience and to interact with.

And Jack Sparrow actually comes into the movie really late. In the first two movies, Sparrow is on-screen almost at once, in scenes that absolutely mesmerize. Crewing a sinking dinghy, shooting his way out of a coffin floating in the ocean, those are what I was looking for when this movie opened. But when it did get to Sparrow, Depp rose to the task and had me in stitches all the same.

With regards to the sets, the Singapore scenes were heart-stoppers. The intricacies of the docks, the tunnels, the waterways, and the rooms were elegant escapism. If I were to ever get the chance to see a true pirate hideout, I’d be sorely disappointed if they didn’t look exactly like that. And Shipwreck Cove was the bomb. It was a visual treat that really worked.

As in the first two movies, the action sequences were top-notch. Over-the-top and filled with martial arts elegance somehow tempered with brute savagery, they stand out as confections for the connoisseur of adventure films. Jack Sparrow’s final duel with Davy Jones atop the halyards was just amazing, edge-of-your-seat excitement thoroughly and unashamedly mixed with humor.

Even the final twists worked and fit the characters. No one was totally left in places where I would have wanted them, but their endings all made sense. However, I still have to wonder what lay in Elizabeth’s future and what she was going to do with her life. And Jack seems divided between two goals that appear mutually exclusive of each other.

All in all, though, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is an excellent movie. Fans will be somewhat happy, and properly expecting yet another in the franchise though none at present seem forthcoming. Those who haven’t seen the first two movies and are thinking about seeing this one to see what all the fuss is about are recommended to view the others first.

It be about pirates and magic, matie! What more could ye be a-wanting? Arrrrrrrr!

Run Between The Shadows!

In 1989, FASA Corporation, a Chicago-based game company, rolled out Shadowrun. It was a pen-and-paper role-playing-game (RPG) set in a dark future after magic and mystical races had returned to the world.

In this bold new world, magic existed with cyber-technology. Players could create and adventure with cyberware-augmented human or troll heroes (who had their skeletons enhanced with nano-bots or weapons built right into their bodies) or with magic-wielders elven, human, or other race capable of laying waste to people and building.

RPG gamers snapped up the new product and ran with it. Since that time, Shadowrun has constantly been a property sought out by gamers. They adventure through a dark world of treachery and betrayal, working for Mr. Johnsons (the name applied to anyone willing to pay them to run through the city to get information, things, or people. Players could sign up as bodyguards, transport specialists, or outright assassins.

Megacorps run the world, and the players can choose to affiliate with one of them or live off the grid and risk life and limb just to live to see another day.

The RPG was so popular that it spawned a video game for the SNES console as well as the Sega Mega Drive. There was also a CCG, collectible card games.

On May 29, 2007, Xbox 360 and Windows Vista release the latest Shadowrun game. Although initially conceived as being based on the Halo gaming platform, the game designers soon had to write their own engine to drive the game. Shadowrun features 16-multiplayer capability in a first-person shooter scenario.

As a first-person shooter, the player will be able to choose between two different megacorps to play. In addition to the individual gamer’s experience against the game, the designs aren’t his.

Not only that, but Shadowrun will be the first video game to allow crossover gameplaying of the PC and Xbox 360 over Xbox Live. Alterations were made in the PC controls (which some game players have already protested even before the game has been released) to put the console players on equal footing with the PC players. The PC functionality has been lessened to provide harder target acquisition and limited movement to imitate the console player’s handheld controller. The console player also has access to auto-aiming to compensate for the pinpoint accuracy the PC player enjoys.


Screenshots released from the game are beautiful and show the amount of work the designers and the artists have gone to in order to make a good game. Players will have fully rendered 3-D environments to combat each other.

The original Shadowrun game was pen and paper role-playing-game (RPG) that rose to an overnight cult following in 1989. FASA Corporation published the game from that period to 2001 when they closed their doors and sold the rights to WizKids, another company created by FASA’s owners/product designers Jordan Weisman.

The RPG was set in 2050 and the major conceits were that the world had changed from nations and being politically-driven to megacorporations and being profit-driven. Magic and magical creatures and races had also returned to the world. The players usually rolled up characters who became “shadowrunners.” They were called that because they ran between the shadows of the megacorps and off the grid. They were usually hired by “Mr. Johnsons” to steal data, corrupt computer systems, and kidnap employees.

Shadowrun the PC Vista and Xbox 360 game is set in Brazil in 2021 and is a prequel to the events that changed the world. In the RPG game, the VITAS plagues (Virally Induced Toxic Allergy Syndrome) and the Computer Crash of 2029 set those events in motion. The new game is going to backfill some of the history of the RPG and sharpen the definitions of the races involved in the Shadowrun world.

As a writer, I was involved with Shadowrun and ended up doing three novels based on the game. I had a great time with the books and invented my own team of shadowrunners headed up by Jack Skater. The team included a troll street samurai called Elvis. How can you not love this stuff!

The Doctor Is In...Stores, That Is, On August 14th!

Doctor Strange, Marvel Comics’ perennial Sorcerer Supreme, is getting a direct-to-DVD, direct-to-Blu-ray release on August 14, 2007. The movie is the last of the four movies Marvel Comics allowed to be based on their popular characters.

Doctor Strange was created in 1963 by Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Stan Lee literally gave birth to the Marvel Comics line in 1963 when he brought out The Fantastic Four, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, The Mighty Thor, Daredevil, and The X-Men.

Richly imagined by Steve Ditko, the worlds of Doctor Strange drew readers into mysterious and dangerous places filled with action and magic. He gave the world Baron Mordo, Dormammu, the Mindless Ones, Nightmare, and Mephisto. The weird dimensions Doctor Strange wandered through often felt like Dutch artist M. C. Escher, with stairways and roads that led to impossible places.

Doctor Strange started out as Doctor Stephen Vincent Strange, a gifted surgeon with a definite God complex and arrogant beyond belief. Then he ended up have a tragic car accident that left him permanently disabled and never able to perform surgery again.

Strange ended up homeless and alone. The good life he’d been living slipped right through his palsied fingers and he found himself living on the streets. But he pursued every opportunity he could think of to correct his physical disability. Nothing worked.

After exhausting conventional wisdom regarding healing himself, Strange journeyed to the Himalayas to find a cure that might be possessed by a man known only as the Ancient One. Instead of aiding him, though, the Ancient One offers to train Strange in the magical arts. Strange doesn’t want to be trained as a sorcerer, though. On his way out he discovers Baron Mordo plans to kill the Ancient One and take his magical secrets.

Strange can’t let the assassination plans go through and tries to stand against Mordo. But the evil Mordo binds Strange magically. Having no other choice, Strange agrees to be trained in the magical arts. The Ancient One reveals that he’s known of Mordo’s treachery and frees Strange. Then training begins and all the strange worlds, quests, and dangers pull Doctor Strange into them. Fans got to see how Strange used the All-Seeing Eye of Agamotto and the Cloak of Levitation that looked so distinctive the way Ditko drew it. Furthermore, they got to see him practice astral projection at a time when most people had not heard of that.

The 1963 run of comics began in an anthology comic called Strange Tales. The first story was in issue #110. As of #169, the comic got renamed after its lead hero, Dr. Strange. After the initial run was complete with #181, Dr. Strange languished in limbo for a few years before being resurrected in the pages of Marvel Premiere. In 1974, he got his own comic again, as well as his first #1 issue.

Since the end of that run in 1987, Dr. Strange has been in and out of comics in limited series and guest star spots. He’s one of the most unique characters ever turned out by Marvel Comics.

A television movie starring Peter Hooten was made in 1978. The success of The Incredible Hulk on CBS convinced television executives another superhero series could work. Unfortunately those producers created a pilot movie that Stan Lee disavowed as being too campy. The pilot never went anywhere.

Dr. Strange is one of the main characters in the video game, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, and had been in previous Spider-Man games.

In 2006, Lions Gate Home Video began producing the four Marvel direct-to-DVD movies. The first two were Ultimate Avengers and Ultimate Avengers 2, followed early in 2007 by The Invincible Iron Man.

Marvel Comics has posted a website supporting the DVD movie that provides a trailer and information on Dr. Strange. (http://www.marvel.com/doctorstrange)

According to the news releases, Dr. Strange is getting an upgrade and reinterpretation in the movie while honoring the roots of the character. Although Dr. Strange received martial arts training after he became an sorcerer in the comics, in the movie he learns it at the same time as he learns magic.

Buy This Book! Out On May 29th!

Jeff Mariotte has written several Buffy and Angel novels as well as the YA series, Season of the Witch. He's the current chronicler of the Vegas television spin-off novels. He's written comics (Check out his Desperadoes series) and been an editor for DC Comics and IDW.

Currently he's a full-time writer. The above book is his first foray into adult fiction that isn't tied to a licensed property. Jeff lives in the area where the book takes place. He loves noir fiction and movies, passions we share, and tells a great story.

If you're looking for a suspenseful read with a law enforcment background and a touch of the supernatural, please give this book a try. If you buy this book off my recommendation and don't like it, I'll swap you out: a signed edition of one of mine for Jeff's. And I promise, I'll find a good home for Jeff's!

From Amazon:

Bram Stoker Award-nominated author Jeffrey Mariotte delivers a novel of heartstopping horror. When a girl is kidnapped and her family murdered, Sheriff's Lieutenant Buck Shelton is drawn into a bloody supernatural showdown between good and evil-with an innocent girl.

Good Girl Art

I've been a fan of Good Girl Art since forever. One of my all-time favorites is Robert McGinnis, the artist whose work graced most of the mystery and private-eye Gold Medal books I read while growing up. Another was Greg Elvgren, who did many of the Good Girl Art Coke ads back in the day.

Elvgren is gone, but McGinnis is still working on the new Hardcase Crime books edited and published by Charles Ardai (www.hardcasecrime.com). The books are a mix of old and new crime fiction.

The artist responsible for the above painting is Greg Orbik (www.orbikart.com). Here are a couple more he's done. (BTW, the cover is from the comic book series, American Century, by Howard Chaykin, who's a great artist himself.)

Fearless Jones And Paris Minton Are Back And In Trouble Up To Their Ears!

Fearless Jones and Paris Minton are back doing another off-the-books investigation that takes them down the dark alleys of 1956 Los Angeles. The city, especially the areas where Fearless and Paris live as well as the darkness their quest takes them through, is violent and filled with civil unrest.

I discovered Walter Mosley through his first Easy Rawlins novel, Devil In A Blue Dress, which was a lucky occurrence. The Rawlins series tends to be chronologically driven. The first novel is set in the late 1940s and is currently in the early 1960s. A lot has happened in Easy’s life during those years.

A few years ago, Mosley wanted to take a break from his popular series character and a chance to create a different kind of hero. Paris Minton and Fearless Jones actually come across as two halves of a whole. Fearless is a decorated World War II veteran in his mid-30s. He lives up to his name, totally fearless and good at heart. Paris is the true brains of the outfit, the part that is inventive, deceitful, and selfish—to a degree. Without Paris, Fearless would probably never get to the bottom of one of their investigations, but without Fearless Paris would never survive.

Fearless exists in the world doing tough-guy favors for people. Body-guarding and bounty-hunting are two of his primary pursuits, but always within the black community of 1956 Los Angeles. Paris runs a book store that he loves because it gives him the chance to read all the time.

They’ve appeared in two previous novels, Fearless Jones and Fear Itself. In all of their “cases” they actually pursue small crimes that play out big before the adventures are over.

In this book, Paris is haunted by family. His cousin Useless (Ulysses S. Grant IV) shows up at an inopportune moment and things go downhill quickly from there. Not long after Paris turns Useless from his door, Paris gets interrupted by his current girlfriend's current boyfriend. Paris flees for his life (his first rule of operation) and looks up Fearless for backup. But by the time they return to Paris's bookshop, there's a dead man lying there.

No sooner than Fearless and Parish have the body hidden away so no one will take the fall for murdering him than Paris's aunt Three Hearts arrives and begins threatening Paris. Since her evil eye is known to kill, Paris aims to please.

Their investigation is hampered by the fact that Useless is a chronic liar and a man not afraid of committing criminal behavior. His mother, Three Hearts, believes nothing but the best of her son. She’s also one of the book’s best characters: a gun-toting black woman totally unafraid of unloading on anyone stupid enough to take her on.

It doesn’t take Paris and Fearless long to realize that the dead man in Paris’s book shop and Useless’s disappearance are connected. They seek out the trail and start getting deeper and deeper into trouble. Fearless also has a recovery job he’s doing for one of the local bail bondsmen that occasionally gets in the way.

Fear of the Dark felt a lot like the other two books, but that's good. The investigation proceeds at a nice clip and the characters are always fun. Mosley also writes the Easy Rawlins mysteries. Of late, those have been set in the early 1960s. Easy is a married man and at least twenty years older than Paris and Fearless. Paris narrates, and his voice is at once young and aged, savvy and naive.

Mosley's pacing in this book will keep readers flipping pages late into the night. He seems more comfortable at this length than he has in previous novels. There's also more back story and a better view of California at the time in this one. His dialogue seems dead-on and so do his characters.

I’ve always had a good time with Mosley’s work. Up until now, I’ve always enjoyed the Easy Rawlins novels most, but with this latest entry Mosley has pulled the race to a dead heat. Easy has hard-hearted killer Mouse (Raymond Alexander) covering his back when he gets into dangerous waters, but Fearless Jones is truly heroic, a kind and gentle soul capable of great violence.

If you're new to Mosley's work, I'd recommend Devil In A Blue Dress first. The FEAR series can be read pretty much in what order you find them.

Rocky Balboa's Final Fight!

In Sylvester Stallone's latest and, potentially greatest, take on his seminal hero Rocky Balboa, the writer/director/actor scores big in the emotional clenches. These are the final moments of a great character so many people have come to know and love.

When I heard about the film getting green-lit with Sylvester Stallone in the starring role, I have to own up to some skepticism. I really didn't think Stallone could pull it off. I thought maybe he wouldn't have the chops physically or possibly be too emotionally close to the character and the lucrative franchise it became to take enough risks with the character.

Twenty minutes into the film, though, I was convinced that I was in for a comfortable, exciting, and emotional reunion and final meeting with a hero that's been in my life for thirty years. I saw Rocky when it came out. He and Burt Reynolds were the reasons I drove Trans Ams for ten years. Burt had Sally Field back then and jeans looked great on her, so maybe Burt had a little more influence.

Rocky's personal life has always been a series of tragedies. He was a bum from nowhere who got a shot in Rocky. He almost lost the woman of his dreams in Rocky II. He lost his trainer, Mickey, who was like a father to him in Rocky III. He lost one of his greatest friends, Apollo Creed, in Rocky IV. And in Rocky V, he lost everything and got kicked to the curb back in his old neighborhood while getting betrayed by a young boxer he was trying to help.

And in Rocky Balboa, he's lost Adrian. Knowing the character for as long as I did, I had to wonder what was left. His life appears comfortable, but it's empty. The tour he takes us on during those opening minutes of the film bear this out. His relationship with his son has gone south. More than anything, though, Rocky just doesn't know what to do with himself. When Adrian was alive, he could give up the fighting. He had her. Now he no longer has her and all he has is that restless drive to be inside a ring matched up against an opponent.

Stallone pays loving tribute to his character and graciously gives the fans a great story. It's not art. It's not always polished. What you've got here, folks, is myth, the stuff of good dreams. That's been enough for people since they first gathered around campfires to swap stories.

Total High Definition Experiene--Doesn't Help Story


PHONE BOOTH Blu-ray is packed the way HD movies should come. It's loaded with MPEG2@26MBPS video, which means that everything on the screen looks simply incredible. The colors are vibrant and the images are sharp and clear. At this point in time, picture quality really doesn't get any better. The audio portion of the disc was treated in the same fashion. The soundtrack as well as the special effects noises were crystal clear and come through a surround sound system gloriously.


Unfortunately, high-tech doesn't improve the movie. It's still a good watch with plenty of tension, but not enough of the story is given. Colin Farrell and Forest Whitaker are the only two given the chance to really act. An argument can be made for Kiefer Sutherland's voice-over work, but he was missing in action when it came to being on-stage.


Also, other than the commentary, there were no extras or behind-the-scenes pieces. But it's top of the line for people looking for the true experience of an HD disc for their home entertainment systems.

No Character Development And Predictable But It Will Keep You Nailed To The Seat!

Everyone knows the story of the POSEIDON. This is only the third movie to bear the name and be based (loosely) on Paul Gallico's novel, THE POSEIDON Adventure. There was also a sequel to the original diaster film made by Irwin Allen that starred Ernest Borgnine and Shelly Winters and a ton of others that went on to be major stars.

This version offers Kurt Russell, Richard Dreyfuss, Emmy Rossum, Jacinda Barrett, Mike Vogel, Mia Maestro, Jimmy Bennett, and Andre Braugher. Unfortunately, it only features the actors and actresses in roles that you can understand at a glance. There are no real characters here, no sense of history.

What you do get is a knuckle-buster of an adrenaline-soaked movie. After POSEIDON was overturned by the rogue wave about eighteen minutes into the film, I didn't draw a breath till the final frames rolled through.

Was the plot predictable? Sure. Could I figure out who was going to live and who was going to die? I was right more times than I was wrong. POSEIDON was shot on 53 sound stages, some of them several stories tall. The special effects were amazing and the digital work is unsurpassed. The ship felt real even though it wasn't.

In this HD-DVD version, the video portions are beautiful and really show off the cinematography and sets. But the audio is where POSEIDON soars. Captured in Dolby TrueHD, one of the best lossless codec on the market today. A surround sound system totally enhances the viewing experience, and this is one of the movies you can show off your system on.

The viewing can be gut-wrenching and the intensity is definitely pumped up, so young viewers probably aren't a good idea. But for someone who's looking for a high-end action movie that doesn't slow down during a 90-minute presentation, POSEIDON is great entertainment.

Everybody's A Writer!

Man, everywhere you go people are jumping into the big children's market that's out there. Although I really think it's so big because adults have discovered kids' books are the bomb and are double-dipping by buying them for their kids and reading them themselves. I know I do. And I even buy books that Chandler will like "later, when he grows up a little." It's inexcusable really. I should just own up to the fact that I like kids' books.

Anyway, tonight I discovered one of my favorite actresses and her brother have penned what looks like the first the first book in a series.

The actress is Gina Gershon (www.ginagershon.com, www.myspace.com/ginagershon) who has been in a ton of stuff. You'll probably recognize her from something. Or you can check her out at www.imdb.com.

I think she's totally hawt, but she also seems like someone you could sit down and talk to about stuff. And that she might actually have something to say.

About the book:


From Amazon: Einstein P. Fleet is shipped off to summer camp against his will for a summer of fun and fresh air. Stranded in the middle of the Mojave Desert, the eccentric boy soon discovers that the haunt is little more than an alien-run smuggling operation run by the counselors who are turning his fellow campers into monsters, with plans of selling them to an intergalactic zoo. Unable to convince anyone of the dire situation, it's up to Einstein to save the others and himself in the process.



I've got it ordered and will let you know what I think after Chandler and I read it.

But man! There's competition everywhere!