So at the moment I’m reading a book by David Weber with the somewhat unfortunate title The Apocalypse Troll, which always makes me snicker a little, perhaps because of Dennis the Vizsla’s run-in with Obvious Troll a few years ago. (However, the Troll in this book is not obvious. At least, not once it stops firing nukes at the U.S. Navy.)
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 12/4/2012: The Apocalypse Troll”
This week I’m reading Pines, by Blake Crouch. This is another Prime freebie for the Kindle, thus continuing my effort to avoid spending money on books for a while — an effort which has probably just been extended by another few months due to my iPod’s unfortunate high-speed encounter with a tile floor. Deceleration trauma is rough on small spinning drives! Anyway, “Pines” is about a Secret Service agents who awakens in a small Idaho town following a car crash, and has a rather rough time leaving. I’m almost finished with it and, while I figured out the Big Twist well before the Big Reveal, the rules say no spoilers, so I had to choose my two sentences carefully. Here goes!
“It’s done,” Pilcher said, “and you’re my new sheriff. Welcome aboard.”
Believe me, this falls into the category of “An Offer You Can’t Refuse”.
And now, of course, here is this week’s teaser from The War of the Ravels:
The innkeeper tugged his blade free again, and accidentally dropped it this time. It failed to penetrate the ground, ending up lying on its side like some sort of unintentional metaphor.
So right now I’m reading Feed, a — wait for it! — not-quite-post-apocalyptic zombie book set in a future America in which people never leave the safety of their homes, preferring to communicate and interact via the Internet, where one is less likely to get attacked by the undead. (Getting attacked by trolls is, of course, still a risk.) The main characters are a trio of bloggers who follow a presidential candidate on the campaign trail, reporting on the stops and events and trying not to get eaten.
My father has always had just one piece of advice about zombies and ammunition, one he’s drilled into my head enough times that it’s managed to stick: When you have one bullet left and there’s no visible way out of the shit you’re standing in, save it for yourself.
Dads are always ready with the good advice! (A certain character from “Deep Rising” may wish he had learned this particular lesson.) Let’s not forget a couple of other important ones, like “Cardio” and “Double-Tap”.
And of course, here’s a little teaser from the upcoming conclusion of Shards:
One did not leave the husks of swatted flies lying about one’s kitchen, especially when expecting visitors. Untelleh would come to the castle once she had been restored from her exile, and it would hardly do to receive her atop a pile of slaughtered Rittandics, like some sort of barbarian despot.
So this weekend we went to see “Inception”, the new trippy mind-bender from trippy-mind-bender-specializing director Christopher Nolan. If you think “Dark City” meets “Matrix” meets “What Dreams May Come” meets “The Spy Who Loved Me”, you won’t be far off. (But don’t think “Dreamscape”. Aside from involving dreams, the films are nothing alike.)
So this weekend we watched Cold Souls, a film about a company that specializes in removing and storing souls for people who find them burdensome. We picked this one because:
A few weeks ago we rented the movie “Sunshine“, in which a group of astronauts embark on a mission to fire a gigantic bomb into the sun (which is suffering from diminished output) to reignite it, and thus rescue Earth from the grip of an endless winter. (Sounds like one of Dennis‘s missions, doesn’t it?) There seems to be a lot of carping about the physics of this, as the sun isn’t scheduled to start dying for quite some time; in the back-story, which is not explained in the film, it is revealed that this is because the sun has captured a Q-Ball which is acting as a damper. I read the explanation and still don’t understand exactly what a Q-Ball is, so I’ve decided it’s something that Q uses when he’s shooting pool. But I digress.
So over the holiday last week, we watched the movie District 9. Originally my wife had declined to screen this film, but after hearing from several friends about how good it was, she agreed to go see it. I had also told her it was supposed to be good, but apparently, after suggesting she might like Hellboy because it was made by Guillermo del Toro (she is a huge fan of his Spanish-language movies like The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth), suggesting she might like Kung Fu Hustle because because it was “probably like a Jackie Chan movie”, and trying to convince her that Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is a classic of 80s filmmaking, I lack credibility. Go figure.
From the “I Don’t Think That’s How They Described It In The Pitch Meeting” department:
Continue reading “Not A Review Of “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome””
So I finally got around to watching Resident Evil: Extinction on one of the free movie channels … and wow, I’m sure glad I didn’t pay any money to see it. I thought the first Resident Evil was mediocre but watchable, and actually rather liked the second one. The third one? Not so much.
Rather than use my usual rating system of how soon it would put my wife to sleep (which would be: Immediately if not sooner), I’m going to revert to the “Things I Learned From This Movie” format that I stole from badmovies.org and that I use occasionally. Ready? Let’s begin.
Viscosity 