Picoreview: The Desolation of Smaug: It is my personal hope that there will be a 2 hour Director’s Cut of The Hobbit that only has, you know. The stuff in the book.

We re-watched An Unexpected Journey last night, which is frankly a long, long movie in which almost nothing happens. Smaug possibly, if you look at it sideways, has more happen, but ( ( Read more... )

I think I’m declaring 2014 as a To-Be-Read-Shelf year. I can read or re-read anything I own, but no buying new books until I’ve cleared out most of what I’ve collected. (EasterCon and World Fantasy added an awful lot to the TBR shelf.) Possibly I’ll go so far as to go around and make a list of what’s *on* the shelf, to keep a sort of focused order ( Read more... )

I wanted to do a quick WFC recap before it gets so far away as to be irrelevant, so here I go. :)

First off, this was the first con I’d been to since about 2006 that I didn’t have professional obligations at. In fact, that’s almost a blanket statement: the first two conventions I went to were the only ones I’ve *not* been at in some professional ( Read more... )

Picoreview: Thor: The Dark World (spoiler-free):

Thor thor thor thor Loki Thor Loki Thor Loki Thor Loki Thor thor thor thor loki Loki LOKI Loki loki thor thor thor Loki Loki Loki LOKI thor

Stay through ALL THE CREDITS, people. ALL THE CREDITS. One does not simply walk out of a Marvel movie before the credits are done rolling!

(not spoilery but not ( Read more... )

This evening we went out to dinner with Juliet McKenna and Tobias Buckell. On the way back, it was raining and Toby had no hat, no brolly, no hood. When we were nearly at the hotel, a tall man with a large umbrella stepped up beside him and said, “I feel rather like Jeeves!”

“Does that make Toby Wooster?” I wondered, which we agreed might be ( Read more... )

I don’t promise I won’t do one of these for every issue, so you should probably be glad that it’s not a monthly title. OTOH, it’s the first time in a loooong time that I’m really impatient for the *next comic*, so hurrah and huzzah!

So this is a 60 page prologue and it’s…wow. A lot happens in it. A *lot* happens, and I’m torn about…it’s well done. ( Read more... )

I’ve had Sons of Anarchy highly recommended to me, and it stars Ron Perlman, so I watched the first episode a few nights ago. I didn’t like it very much-every single person in the story is a right bastard, and it’s clear the story will be about the evolution of Our Hero (Charlie Hunnam, aka “Hey, that’s the guy from Pacific Rim!”) from a right ( Read more... )

Media 1: I got my SiP omnibus edition the other day. It came with a signed print, which I didn’t expect, so that was nice.

It’s a lovely omnibus. Its low price is explained by it being two softcovers in a slipcase (I’d vaguely assumed it’d be hardcovers). My copy happened to arrive with a dinged corner, which is too bad, but not too big a deal.

( Read more... )

I would write a picoreview of Riddick, except Ursula has already pretty well nailed it.

Every time I watch a Riddick film I want to write a character like him (only female, because me). The whole baddest bad guy who is the lesser of two evils in a bad situation kind of character. I love that character (okay, *especially* when growled by Vin Diesel ( Read more... )

Yesterday morning I got out of bed and discovered I had screwed up my back somehow while sleeping. The weekend has not been *especially* fun, as a result.

Despite this, I took Young Indiana to a movie this morning. He only lasted through 30 minutes of the film (Planes: too boring for a 3 year old) and we went to lunch and did some shopping ( Read more... )