Looking over my November list I'm only seeing four free-range short stories.  Andy Merino's grotesque transformation story of a pioneer journey in the Oregon Trail Diary of Willa Porter.  Then Benjamin Rosenbaum's bureaucracy and social media during the zombie apocalypse in Feature Development for Social Networking.  Su Yee Lin has a dreamscape ( Read more... )

More late than usual on this one.  So let us start with the free-range short fiction for August.  We've got "Cayos in the Stream" by Harry Turtledove.  A somewhat alternate history story with Hemingway hunting for Nazi U-boats in the Caribbean.  Then Meghan McCarron's "Swift, Brute Retaliation" where just being dead doesn't stop a dead kid from ( Read more... )

The Campaign: Beyond Will Ferrel punching a baby I wasn't expecting to find this funny. But it was and touching at times. I was honestly pleasantly surprised by this. Plus Will Ferrel does punch a baby. Also a puppy...

The Long Good Friday: Bob Hoskins is a London crime boss having a weekend party to convince some American investors to help ( Read more... )

Pretty great espoinage movie from the Truth is Stranger Than Fiction department. Plus Affleck always seems to be at his best when directing himself. I do have to agree with my mom in wondering if the House Guests escape from Iran was as down to the wire as the movie made it out to be...

An excellent Cold War-era old-school spy movie. Plus its got like half the male actors in all of England in it. Julius Cesar! Al Capone! Sinestro! The Horned King! Dracula! All working for British intelligence...

Dog House: Something happens in a small town that turns all the women in it into cannibal zombie monsters. And then a mini-bus with some kind of bachelor party stops by. This is obviously trying for some kind of social metaphor, but fuck me if I can figure out what it is...

The Local: Low-budget indie crime movie. Bottom of the barrel drug ( Read more... )

A 1965 classic of the espionage genre based on the John Le Carre novel and starring Richard Burton. Burton plays Alec Leamas who is tasked with one last dangerous mission before he can retire. He must pose as a defecting agent in order to set up the downfall of a high ranking agent of East Germany. But in the end the cost of serving crown and ( Read more... )

A great deal better than I was expecting. I especially enjoyed the way Carrel/Smart balanced flashes of goofy incompetence with a general high level of spy skills. Plus its chock full of talent; Alan Arkin, Dwayne Johnson, Terrence Stamp, Masi Oka, Anne Hathaway. Even pro-wrestler Khali showed more range and fake fighting moves than I've ever ( Read more... )

Ok, first off, thats still a stupid title. Even allowing that the new SPECTRE (as revealed about the midpoint of the movie) calls itself Quantum, still dumb. But other than that I found this new Bond movie even better than the last. Some reviewers say that its too "Bourne" like with its action sequences. I agree with that, in that its action ( Read more... )

Yipee, LJ is back up and mostly running. Though two of my comics feeds just barfed up their last half-dozen entries onto my friends page...

Anyway, I decided to watch the 3rd Sandbaggers disc. The inspiration this series had on Rucka's Queen & Country is pretty easy to spot. Though Neil Burnside is much bigger bastard than Q&C's Paul Crocker. ( Read more... )