Well, that was something. I’ll briefly touch on the plot of the movie, since judging by the box office everyone’s already seen the movie. After this weekend’s box office, I’m pretty sure Whedon could name any project and any budget and he’ll get it. The only director who has more power than Whedon right now is probably James Cameron (a $2 BILLION movie get’s you a lot of respect). So, I’m pretty curious what Whedon will want to do next. So, Avengers Assemble, I mean let’s get to the review.
Joss Whedon GQ Interview
Joss Whedon is kinda busy right now. He just had a horror film (The Cabin in the Woods) released and is premiering (today in the US) THE tent pole movie of 2012, The Avengers. To go along with all his work, there is a bunch of media about him, the best of which is this GQ article. It goes into detail about his career. From Buffy (the movie) to script doctor to Buffy (the show) and Angel. Then two canceled Fox shows and a web success and a well-received (but mediocre box office) movie. This doesn’t exactly look like the profile of someone that would be handed the reins to The Avengers. But the article talks about this in detail. Go read it.
Support the Firefly Serenity set
We are a big Lego household (and also huge fans of Firefly), so when I saw that Lego CUUSOO had a project for a Lego Serenity, I knew that I had to support it. Go and show your support as well.
Count to a Trillion by John C. Wright
I enjoyed John C. Wright’s Golden Age trilogy and was excited to see that he had a new book coming out, Count to a Trillion. Unfortunately it was bland, padded and not very well done. The Golden Age Trilogy was full of big ideas and wondrous characters and, while Count to a Trillion has interesting characters and big ideas, it never pulls them together in an interesting way. The characters are too broadly drawn and the ideas are interesting, but barely relate to the story at times. Let’s see what went wrong.
Mongoliad by Neal Stephenson, et al.
The Mongoliad is an idea conceived by Neal Stephenson about European fighting arts (e.g. swordplay) and experimental storytelling (the book was originally released as smartphone app with videos, maps and other non-written pieces). The writing was done by numerous folks (Stephenson and Greg Bear are the most well known) and was finally collected in a novel. Click in to see the humorous book trailer (featuring Neal Stephenson) and stay tuned as I’ll have a review in a few days.
New Syfy shows
Just a few weeks ago, I was wondering if The Science Channel was better for science fiction than Syfy. Well, it looks like Syfy is striking back with a huge slate of new shows (official presentation will be next week) which include aliens, time travel, space ships as well as a few ghost shows. So, let’s look at a couple of the highlights.
Friends With Boys by Faith Erin Hicks
I’m always on the lookout for interesting comics and because of that, my comics reading has a much wider genre circle than the rest of my fiction reading. Case in point, Faith Erin Hicks comic Friends With Boys. If it wasn’t a graphic novel, then it wouldn’t be anything I’d be interested in. Then again, I’m not sure it’s the type of thing I’d be reading going forward. It’s not that the book is bad (since it’s not), but I really wasn’t interested in the book that much. So let’s see what it was about.
A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Ever since the John Carter movie came out last summer, I’ve had an urge to read Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoon series. I hadn’t read it previously, so I thought this would be a decent time to start. I picked up A Princess of Mars and, while you could tell that parts of it were definitely dated, it was still a fun action-adventure read. It’s hard to believe that the book (collecting the first of the Barsoon short stories) was the first things that Burroughs had ever published. It is, for the most part, well told and there are only a few rough spots. So, let’s find out more about our princess.
Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland
The loss of Harvey Pekar in 2010 was an enormous blow to the comic community. Not the mainstream (i.e superhero) community, but the self-publishing and independent scene. Pekar was one of the grandfathers of the self-published, biographical comic industry (and there have been many, many followers in that path) and his loss was profound. Since Pekar never really retired from comics, there were several books in flight when he died. The first posthumous book released was Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland. Part biography, part history Harvey Pekar waxes on about the city he lived in and loved and does it in a way that only Harvey Pekar could have.
Sean Young’s home movies of Dune
Sean Young played Paul’s love interest Chani in David Lynch’s Dune and she’s posted on Youtube a video diary (with her narration and music by Scott Joplin) of the movie. It looks like it only covers the pre-production and start of filming. Hopefully she has more home movies from this era that she could share with everyone.After the jump for the video