Book Review: The Adventures of Arabella Ashby Trilogy

I originally became aware of this series when I read the short story, "The Wreck of the Mars Adventure" in Old Mars, an anthology of stories about Mars, edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. This introduces the setting, where space is filled with breathable air. This means that ordinary sailing ships can be modified to sail between celestial bodies. The short story describes the first attempt to sail to Mars and was rather enjoyable. The Arabella trilogy is set later in the same world. The author's intent was to write a clockpunk [1] regency novel.[2] I was intrigued by the idea and thought that Leann might like that concept, so we started reading them together.[3] The books in the trilogy are: Arabella of Mars, Arabella and the Battle for Venus, and Arabella the Traitor of Mars.

Hallowe'en Bulwer-Lyttons I

I've previously described the concept behind the Bulwer-Lytton contest [1], but I'll briefly refresh you on the main points. The gist of it is to write the worst possible opening line for a novel. There is a formal contest held every year by the English Department of San José State University [2], but my friends of the former BYU 38th Ward Book Club and I like to hold an informal one every year for Hallowe'en (as part of what we call The Kingdom of Horror). What follows are the worst first lines I could come up with in the inaugural year of the Hallwe'en Bulwer-Lytton (2011). I am only posting my own creations here; however, if you just can't get enough of bad opening lines, you can also read those of my friends.[3] (Warning: Some are not for the faint in heart.)

Airline Movie Reviews

This post consists of reviews of the movies I watched during my trans-Atlantic flights on my recent trip to Norwich, England.[1] And, since I have your attention, I'll throw in a few others, including books I read on the flight/during layovers, and a few other things I've read or watched recently. First up is Prometheus, a sort of prequel to the Alien series of movies. Next up is a new film rendition of The Great Gatsby. Then I review Argo, a film based on the Iran hostage crisis of 1979. After that is Oblivion, a post-apocalyptic film where humans have abandoned the Earth and are harvesting its oceans so they can survive off-planet. The fifth movie I watched on my flights was Rango, but I've already reviewed that.[2] Since I've been back I've also watched Iron Man 3. During the flight I finished three books. The first was The Wind Whales of Ishmael, which imagines that the narrator of Moby Dick accidentally travels millions of years into the future. Then I read one of Shakespeare's lesser-known plays, King John. Finally, I read Icehenge by Kim Stanley Robinson, which is about a mysterious artifact that is discovered on Pluto. After that I discuss an English cookie (they call it a biscuit), Coronet Bourbon Creams, and a new brand of rolled tortilla chips, Quitos.

Movie Review: The Host

I knew that The Host was based on a book by Stephenie Meyer, the same author who wrote the Twilight series. So when I decided to rent The Host from RedBox I just assumed that there would be a RiffTrax [1] available to help me make it through the movie unscathed. To my surprise RiffTrax hasn't done anything with The Host, yet. But by then it was too late—I'd already come home with the DVD. So we watched it commentary-free.

Many Movie Reviews III

In this round of concatenated movie reviews I'll be discussing the chamber play-like film, Arsenic and Old Lace. After that is Ballet Shoes, a BBC production of a popular story about three plucky orphans adopted by an old fossil collector. Next is The Black Stallion, which is about a young boy and his horse. The Bourne Legacy follows, which is kind of a "side-quel" to the Bourne trilogy. After that is Dinosaur Wars, a documentary about the so-called "Bone Wars" between the paleontologists Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope (and to a lesser extend Joseph Leidy).[1][2] Then I review Flawless, a 2007 thriller about a daring diamond heist concoted by a janitor and an underappreciated female executive. This is followed by I Am Number Four, a film about a refugee alien hiding on our planet. Strangely enough, the film rights were bought a year and a half before the source material (a book by "Pittacus Lore") was even published.[3] After that is Ink, an independently-produced fantasy film that actually became commercially succesful as a result of illegal sharing on peer-to-peer networks.[4] In succession I consider the merits of the time-travel romance Kate & Leopold. Next up is The Secret of NIMH, an animated feature that I was quite fond of as a child. Then we have Skyline, a low-budget rip-off of Battlefield: Los Angeles.[5] In fact, the guys that did the special effects for Battlefield: Los Angeles were the directors of this movie. And, taking a cue from The Asylum [6], they whipped out this 'mockbuster' four months before the release of Battlefield: Los Angeles. Next up is the comic book adaptation, Thor. This is followed by my thoughts on the  steampunk western action-comedy film, Wild Wild West. Last we have The Woman in Black, ostensibly a ghost story but really just an attempt by Daniel Radcliffe to escape his Harry Potter past.[7]

Warning: There are a lot of spoilers. Rather than hide them all, I'm warning you here. Proceed at your own discretion.

Television Review: Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Season 5

Well, thanks to Leann and Lilli going to visit family in Texas for two weeks, I'm finally caught up on Star Wars: The Clone Wars.[1] It has been announced that all the episodes for a sixth season were completed before the Star Wars franchise was sold to Disney and those will somehow be made available (possibly by being broadcast on a Disney-owned channel), but there probably won't be a seventh.[2] However, there is a hint that a new animated Star Wars series will be produced.[3] I certainly hope to see the sixth season of the current series, but I'm also willing to acknowledge that this season left things at a reasonably decent stopping point (see below). So if this season ended up being the last hurrah, I wouldn't be disappointed to see it end here.

Television Review: Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Season 4

Those of you who know me know that I am a big fan of Star Wars. When this cartoon series began, I was quite excited and diligently watched each new episode as it came out.[1] But since then I've fallen behind, and since then the series has wrapped up. Apparently there is more material, but further work on the series has been cancelled following the sale of the Star Wars franchise to Disney.[2] It is unclear how that material will be made available to the public.

Movie Review: Star Trek Into Darkness

The filmmakers of Star Trek Into Darkness played coy with us (and in a few cases outright lied to us). They said the villain (played by Benedict Cumberbatch, of Sherlock [1] fame) would be "Harry Mudd, or Trelane, or Gary Mitchell, or the Talosians or the Horta."[2] Later as trailers, screenings, and interviews began we were given the name for Cumberbatch's character: John Harrison…which wasn't any of the three we were originally told. Then things really started getting fishy. One of the new characters was revealed to be Dr. Carol Marcus. And there was a trailer with some highly evocative scenes reminscent of a previous Star Trek movie.[3] If you haven't already figured it out, I reveal the identity of the villain below. Proceed at your own risk.

Many Movie Reviews II

This is my next round of mass movie reviews. We'll start with The Adjustment Bureau, a tale about a Democratic [1] presidential candidate who discovers that there is a secret (and supernatural) organization trying to put him in office. After that is The Big Year, a film about competing birders that is loosely based on the real Big Year competition of 1998.[2] This is followed by my thoughts on Captain America: The First Avenger. Then we have The Conspirator, a film by Robert Redford about a woman, Mary Surratt, accused of involvement in the plot to assassiante Abraham Lincoln because the conspirators assembled at her hotel. Next up is Dante's Peak, a thriller about a man whose dire predictions of an impending volcano are ignored. This is followed by my thoughts on Jeremiah Johnson, a film loosely based on the real-life mountain man, Liver-Eating Johnson. Then I review Legend, a fantay film from the early 1980s, which draws a lot of imagery from the Bible (Garden of Eden, Fall, Redemption). Following this is Alfred Hitchcock's classic film, Rear Window. After that is Return to Oz, an attempt by Disney to start an Oz film franchise. Next up is Season of the Witch, about a woman accused of causing the Black Death. And I wrap things up with a review of Star Trek, the recent reboot of the series by J. J. Abram.

Movie Review: John Carter

I first saw a trailer for John Carter when I went to see Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 3D.[1] I thought it looked pretty awesome and I was eager to see it. Leann and I don't make it to the movie theater that often, anymore, so it's taken me a while to actually watch this film. But in the meantime I read several of the books in the 'Barsoom' series. This one is actually based mostly on A Princess of Mars.[2] but also incorporates a few elements from The Gods of Mars.[3]

Book Review: The Master Mind of Mars

The Master Mind of Mars retreads the "super brain at the expense of everything else" vs. "average at everything (but really super brawn)" theme from The Chessmen of Mars.[1] In that book there are creatures, called kaldanes, which are little more than large-brained heads that can switch bodies (which they call rykors) at will. The kaldanes didn't care what gender of rykor they assumed; it just had to be humanoid. In this book, a mad scientist has been experimenting with swapping brains between the bodies of different creatures, but he has no reservations whatsoever—a woman's brain into a man's body, a man's brain into an ape's body, two halves of different brains into the body of a third, and so on. An Earthman (not John Carter, this time [2]) discovers this scientist and helps him with his gruesome work for a while until he falls in love with one of the female subjects. He inevitably defies the mad scientist and the rest of the novel ensues.

Book Review: The Chessmen of Mars

Despite the title of the book, the Earthly game of chess is never played by any of the characters. Instead, Edgar Rice Burroughs invented a new chess-like game for the Martians to play, with its own unique pieces and rules: jetan. But that left Burroughs with a conundrum: to entitle the book The Jetan-Men of Mars might be confusing or even offputting to potential readers but to entitle the book The Chessmen of Mars would be inaccurate. He finally went with the latter. Jetan is supposedly a representation of the ancient animosity between the Yellow Martians and the Black Martians. However, the reason it appears in the title is because at one point a giant jetanboard is introduced and live players are forced to take the place of pieces and fight to the death to capture a given square. As far as I can tell, Burroughs was the first to write such a scene.[1]

Book Review: Thuvia, Maid of Mars

After three books about John Carter, Edgar Rice Burroughs finally decided to try writing about another character in his Barsoom series.[1] This time we're reading about Carthoris, John Carter's son (though the apple doesn't fall far from the tree). Burroughs also switched from the first person narrative he used while telling about John Carter to third person with an omniscient narrator. So in a few instances we actually get to see some scenes from the point of view of the titular character, Thuvia, who first appeared in the second book, The Gods of Mars.[2]

Television Review: THE EVƎNT, Season 1.5

I felt like NBC's THE EVƎNT had pretty good momentum through the first half of the season.[1] But then the show took a three month hiatus. I suspected that this, more than any flaws in characterization, plot, or dramatic tension, would result in the cancellation of the show. Since I wasn't a die-hard fan, I lost track of it and didn't realize when it resumed airing the rest of the season. One day I saw it advertised on Hulu and realized that the season was already over. And, sure enough, by then the show had been cancelled due to poor ratings.[2] THE EVƎNT started out with flashbacks and mysterious happenings—obviously an attempt to duplicate the LOST phenomenon. But viewers complained about this aspect making the show too confusing, so they jettisoned it from the second half of the season.[3] However, unlike LOST, they promised that they wouldn't take forever to answer questions posed. They did a pretty good job of this, answering questions within a few episodes but still managed to maintain dramatic tension.

Movie Review: Mars Needs Moms

When I added this to my Netflix queue (and even after I'd watched it), I had no idea that it was the biggest box office bomb of all time, unadjusted for inflation.[1] It was also the biggest critical and financial failure of any film attached to the Disney company.[2] It's based on a book by Berkeley Breathed (whose comic strips, Bloom County and Opus, I've never enjoyed) and was directed by Simon Wells (some of whose other films I have enjoyed, including An American Tail: Fivel Goes West, The Prince of Egypt, and The Time Machine). It was released the same week as Battle: Los Angeles [3], which may have contributed to its financial demise.

Movie Review: Battle: Los Angeles

The movie Battle: Los Angeles is almost a hybrid of Cloverfield and Saving Private Ryan. It depicts an alien invasion of the U.S. coastal city of Los Angeles (much like the Cloverfield creature ravaged the U.S. coastal city of New York). The camera work is intended to make you feel like a part of the action (much like Saving Private Ryan [1]) and you're treated to the horrors of war—whether the opposing combatants be human beings or extraterrestrials.

Eventful Weekend

Besides all of the things we normally have to do on the weekends (play with Lilli, clean the house, water the garden, feed Lilli (and ourselves), wonder where all the time went, etc.), we had some unique and exciting activities this last weekend. Let's start out with Lillian's NICU graduate party on Saturday. Every year there is a party to celebrate all of the lives that the staff at the Provo IHC NICU have helped to preserve.

Movie Review: MST3K: Pod People

While we were scanning through the episodes of MST3K available for instant streaming from Netflix, so we could watch something intended to be horror for Hallowe'en [1], we spotted Pod People. Leann immediately perked up because she could recall an episode of the TV show Hey Dude where they're eating potato chips and they start talking about this movie. So we decided to watch it and find out why. We were not disappointed. Or, rather, we were.

Rolling, Grasping, and Giggling

Lilli has been rolling front-to-back and giggling for weeks, now. But catching it on film has proven surprisingly difficult. As soon as the camera comes out, she stops performing. She seems to have an uncanny knack for knowing when to play coy. In fact, she seems to tolerate tummy time for a lot longer if there's a camera turned on.

Book Review: We Are Not the First

Andrew Thomas starts out by dredging up a series of pseudo-historical, pseudo-scientific claims about 'out-of-place' artifacts [1] and events that suggest that ancient civilizations were once at least as advanced as we are, if not more. For him the rise and fall of civilizations isn't just that, it's evidence that aliens once visited the Earth and imparted their wisdom and technology (which we've since lost and are only now rediscovering). I'll give him this, he did a lot of research. But he's wholly unable to approach anything with any skepticism. Anything and everything is potential evidence for him. And if it's evidence against, he happily discards it.[2] He also often fails to reason through his ideas.[3]