Friday, December 29, 2006

Link du Jour: Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

I had dinner with a buddy last night and the 100-page Rule came up in conversation. We talked about how there are too many great page-turners out there and not enough time to read them all, so we've got no business forcing ourselves to read books that aren't grabbing us. I offered Preston and Child's The Relic up as a recent book that I couldn't get through fast enough. It's too bad the movie that was made from it was so average, but the book is exciting and chilling and just keeps pushing you forward until you're done.

That, plus the fact that Preston and Child have inter-connected their stories by having characters and organizations crossover from book to book, makes me very interested in reading more by them.

To Read: For Edgar

You all know how much I love the historical and/or literary mysteries. For Edgar is in the latter category since it's about a serial killer called "The Raven" who bases his or her crimes on gruesome deaths from Edgar Allan Poe stories.

That's a great premise, but it doesn't tell me anything about the execution. Fortunately, Bookgasm's Rod Lott takes care of that when he calls it "a worthy successor to Silence of the Lambs."

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Turbines to speed.

Wow. I sucked at posting over Christmas. Sorry about that.

This isn't even a real post here, but just a quick, engine-revving note to let you know that I'm back, and to remind me that now I also have to write reviews of The Dust Factory, the Spy Kids movies, and The Polar Express.

I'll save my whining over the loss of Rose Tyler for another occasion once I'm back up to speed.

Monday, December 18, 2006

Happy Spielberg Day!

Today is Steven Spielberg's 60th birthday. I'm not a hardcore fan of his, but when I think of movies like Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Schindler's List, I wonder why not. The answer is in movies like E.T., Empire of the Sun, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and A.I., but there's still no denying the man's talent and I'm glad that for all of that, he's still a horror/sci-fi guy at heart.

In other news, I'm on vacation this week and am likely to blow off posting some. I'll try to keep up with movie reviews (next up: Timeline and Interstate 60) because if I get behind in those, I'll never catch up. But I'm definitely letting Link du Jour go until after Christmas.


I'll also try to find time to tell you why I gave up on Armageddon's Children after only 50 pages and how that's probably the last nail in the coffin as far as me reading any more Terry Brooks goes.

Friday, December 15, 2006

30 Days of Night Movie Update: Another Still

Another image from the 30 Days of Night movie. This one's via Ben Templesmith's blog.

Review: A Sound of Thunder

You might expect that a movie based on a Ray Bradbury short story might not live up to its source material. But if it's got a gun-toting, chiseled hero leading an expedition across a futuristic, jungle-covered city that's inhabited by sea serpents, giant bats, and baboonosaurs... well, that's got to be awesome, right?

Not so much.

I've never read Bradbury's original version of "A Sound of Thunder," but I've read comics adaptations of it, so I'm familiar with what happens. Even though Bradbury's story says that changing history by altering the past can't be undone, I figured that the movie would mostly be about just that. And that's okay. Really, Bradbury's story makes its point and then just ends at a rather unsatisfying place, so I've got no problem with the idea of continuing from there and having the heroes try to fix things. Especially if doing so involves futuristic, jungle-covered cities and baboonosaurs.

Unfortunately, the special effects in the film version of A Sound of Thunder are beneath bad and into "laughable" territory. The dinosaur in the prehistoric sequences looks like it was created for a video game, and the blue screen work -- which puts the characters into the setting of futuristic Chicago -- is ridiculous. Thanks to flat imagery and goofy lighting, you never for a second believe that the characters actually inhabit the backgrounds in the exterior shots of the city. There are even a couple of shots of characters walking through the city where the actors are very clearly walking in place as the scenery moves past behind them. The baboonosaurs and other monsters are all well-designed, but no more realistic than the prehistoric dinosaur.

The acting by the main cast is absolutely fine (I mean, it's got Ben Kingsley in it, for goodness sake, and Jemima Rooper from Hex), but I actually gasped at how poorly some of the bit part actors delivered their lines.

It's a shame, because this could've been a fun, simple, adventure movie, even if it wasn't an intelligent adaptation of Bradbury's story. Glaring parts of it are so amateurish though, that I was never able to just sit back and enjoy the cheese.

To Read: The Further Adventures of Beowulf

Bookgasm comes through again with another reading recommendation. This one's about a character that I always felt, as did Rod, would be really cool to read about if only I could decipher the story in all the archaic language .

The Further Adventures of Beowulf helps do that in three ways. First, it presents the original story with a reprint of a translation that Bookgasm calls "accessible and even exciting."

Next, it offers new stories about the character, ranging from adventurous and comical to bloody and sexy. I don't recognize all the authors, but I do have fond memories of reading Lynn Abbey's Thieves' World stuff as a kid.

Finally, The Further Adventures of Beowulf lays out a "a partial but annotated bibliography of Beowulf translations, spin-off novels, movie and TV adaptations and even comic books" for those interested in yet further Beowulf adventures. Bookgasm mentions the Christopher Lambert movie and a DC Comics series. I wonder if the Gerard Butler movie and the done-too-soon Speakeasy series are also on the list.

Comments? Part Two

Apparently, Google is taking over Blogger, which is ultimately going to be a good thing. They're still ironing out bugs in the transition though and unfortunately, I agreed to switch over before everything was resolved. That affects not just this blog, but also any group blogs that I've created, so I apologize for the frustration.

I'm trying to figure out how to ask questions directly of the Beta team, but in the meantime, I found this unresolved issue in Beta's Known Issues log:

Logging in with an old Blogger account to post a comment on the new Blogger is giving a “please try again later” error. Until we fix this, it may work to log in first at http://www.blogger.com/login.g, and then go to the comments page on the new version of Blogger in beta.

I also understand that folks are having trouble commenting even anonymously, but I haven't found anything about that amongst the Known Issues. I'll keep looking for a way to communicate directly with the people in charge.

In the meantime, thanks for your patience and please keep letting me know what kind of problems you're experiencing.

Update: Someone was able to comment on the Constantine post, so it looks like it may be an issue with old vs. new Blogger accounts. The new Blogger accounts are actually Google accounts, so if anyone who's been having problems is interested in signing up for one (if you have a Blogger blog, you're eventually going to have to anyway), I'd be interested in seeing if that solves the problem for you.

Also, I just thought of another workaround. This blog is syndicated on LiveJournal, so if you want, you can always comment there.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Link du Jour: Jeff Parker

This'll be a short one. I don't personally know Jeff Parker and I don't know much about him except that I really really like Agents of Atlas, which he's writing for Marvel. It's not so much a superhero comic as it is a strange, adventure-spy comic with talking gorillas, robot-men, aliens, and mythological women for spies. You can't get anymore awesome than that.

No. You can't.

30 Days of Night Movie Update: First Still

This is the first still that I've seen come off the set of the 30 Days of Night movie.



Scanned from the Wizard 2007 Movie Spectacular. That's Billy Kitka as Manu, Melissa George as Stella (cannot wait for the Dark Days movie, assuming this one does well), and Josh Hartnett as Eben.

Review: Constantine

Being a Hellblazer fan, I resisted seeing Constantine for a long, long time. Pretty much universal consensus among other Hellblazer fans (who were masochistically more willing to take a chance on it than I was) though was that if you watch it not as a Hellblazer movie, but as a generic monster-hunter movie, it's pretty good. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do that.

I tried, but the problem is that the movie actually gets pretty close to the comic in some key places. Setting aside the fact that he's American and has dark hair, Keanu Reeves actually makes a pretty good John Constantine. The attitude, the way he carries himself, the way he lights a cigarette... the character is there and intact. Contrary to some early, troubling production art that got passed around the Internet, there is no Constantinemobile and John doesn't drive at all. And, like in the comic, he's taxied around by a cabbie named Chaz (although the movie version is a much more enthusiastic sidekick than the comics version. There's also an attempt to work in Garth Ennis' famous "Dangerous Habits" storyline.

So, as I'm watching the movie, trying to pretend it's about someone else, I keep getting reminded that, no, this is a Hellblazer adaptation. To judge it purely as something else would mean that I'd have to ignore some things I liked about it, like how Keanu lights a cigarette. But if I let myself count those things into my final estimation, I also have to count stuff that I didn't like, like the crucifix-gun, the magic tatoos, and John's switching to gum.
And seriously, I doubt I'd have liked the crucifix-gun no matter what the name was of the guy carrying it. Really, Constantine is a pretty average monster-hunter flick with decent special effects. It's only in comparison with Hellblazer fans' original expectations of it that it looks good.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Link du Jour: Josh Ortega

It's not uncommon to find a story where the execution isn't as good as the concept. It's much more rare to find one where the execution exceeds the expectations set by the concept.

When Top Cow announced a new comic called Necromancer, I got to read a preview of it in a sampler book they put out. Unfortunately, the preview was just enough to get across the concept, which sounded like a demon-hunting version of Buffy, only where Buffy wears a cheesy costume with lots of unnecessary buckles and stuff. Reviewing the preview, I wrote, "It's a tired concept and there doesn't seem to be anything new about it here."
Thankfully, writer Josh Ortega didn't take offense, but wrote me and candidly asked me to take another look at the actual comic when it came out. He arranged a review copy for me, and sure enough, I liked it a lot better in context. Josh had taken a tired concept (not one he'd come up with, if I understand correctly) and made gold out of it. My reviews of the actual series said stuff like, “A story that’s genuine, both in its portrayal of teens and in its horror... Ortega’s building an epic here. You can see it in his pacing. The book doesn’t drag at all – each issue I read had important revelations and plenty of action – but there’s an ease about the way the story unfolds. It’s taking its time, yet doing so in a very entertaining way, if that makes sense. It’s kind of like LOST that way.”
Unfortunately, I don't think enough people got past the concept to actually try the book, and it was cancelled. Last I heard, Top Cow was trying to figure out a way to build an audience for it so that they could relaunch it. I hope they succeed, as long as Josh gets to write it.
In the meantime, Josh is working on a comic about Frank Frazetta's classic Death Dealer character, as well as a Battlestar Galactica mini-series for Dynamite Entertainment.

To See: Bridge to Terabithia

Like Arthur and the Invisibles, here's another kids-go-to-fantasy-realm movie. As cool as Arthur looks, there's no getting around that the CGI is very cartoony. Sort of a cross between Pixar and The Dark Crystal. Bridge to Terabithia, on the other hand, is going for a realistic, Narnia -- if not Lord of the Rings -- feel.

Looks amazing.

Comments?

I've been told that Blogger's acting a little wonky and not letting folks comment on my blog. I just switched to Blogger Beta, but I don't know if that's the problem or not. I'll try to figure it out with the Blogger people, but in the meantime, if you're not able to comment could you shoot me an email to michaelmay@michaelmay.us and let me know?

Thanks.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Night Watch



I finally saw Night Watch. I couldn't remember why I originally wanted to see it until I went back and read an old blog entry about it, but it turns out, it was everything I hoped for.

Dark? Check. Creepy? Check. Adventure-oriented? Check. Artistic? Double-check.

Everything about the movie is artfully done, even the sub-titles (it's a Russian movie). The sub-titles are actually part of the movie. They appear and disappear around the actors and change style depending on how they're used. If characters are using a computer while talking, the sub-titles take the appearance of text being added to a computer screen, complete with cursor. When a character screams in protest of something he sees happening, the English words "NO!" and "Stop!" literally fly out of him. When a vampire summons her victim from across the city, her whispered words appear in red and almost immediately dissipate, like blooddrops in water.

I mean, really, the movie's worth seeing just for the sub-titles. But it's also worth seeing for other reasons. It's very different from most movies that deal with vampires. In fact, it's not a horror movie at all. More of a fantasy. The vampires are just one of many supernatural creatures (called "Others") in the story. The plot revolves heavily around them, but it could have easily been another kind of creature. There are also witches, psychics, and were-creatures in the film, all choosing either the side of Good/Light (the Night Watch) or Evil/Darkness (the Day Watch).

What's cool is that people from opposite sides don't necessarily hate each other. They're less warriors than rivals. Light Others can live in peace in apartments across the hall from Dark Others, and the leaders of the two groups may not hang out together, but one can safely lounge in the office of the other without any apparent animosity.

Unfortunately, the rivalry is about to get more serious because a prophecy about a powerful, balance-upsetting Other seems to be coming true. That's the plot of Night Watch: each side trying to find this special Other and coerce him or her into joining their team. It's the first of a planned trilogy and it ends like one. Not like Star Wars, where you could really either stop or keep going without any difference. Like Fellowship of the Ring, where you have to keep going to see what's coming up next.
The critics were pretty divided about this movie, so your mileage may vary, but I found Night Watch to be a snazzy, fast-paced, visually beautiful, artistic, fun, exciting movie, and I'm definitely going to keep watching to see what happens.

Monday, December 11, 2006

Link du Jour: Steve Niles

When I first moved to the Twin Cities about fifteen years ago, it took me a while to find a decent comic shop, but eventually I discovered the College of Comic Book Knowledge in Uptown Minneapolis. One of the things that I liked about it was that it had a whole, separate room just for back issues. Every week I'd go in and get my new comics, then head back to the back issue room to browse their shelves full of cool, old comics.

The guy who worked back there was this quiet, but friendly guy who was good to chat with and who'd occasionally give me discounts on issues of John Byrne's Next Men. I learned that he was a writer and I was just starting to get to know him when he told me that he was moving to California. That sucked for me because I really did enjoy our brief, weekly visits, but what are you gonna do?

A while later, the College had an illustrated novella for sale by a "former employee" named Steve Niles. By then, I couldn't remember if that was the same guy whom I used to talk to, but the name sounded familiar, so I bought the book. It was called Freaks of the Heartland and it was very good.

Fast forward several years and I'd started hanging out online at the DC message boards. Someone came over to some Vertigo forum or another and started talking about this great new horror comic called 30 Days of Night. There was a link for more information, so I followed it and learned that 30 Days of Night was written by a guy named Steve Niles. Browsing his site, I learned that it was indeed the same author of Freaks of the Heartland, and after talking to him, I eventually learned that, yeah, he was the guy I used to chat with on New Comic Book Day.

The rest, as they say, is history. 30 Days of Night was as good as I'd heard and its sequel Dark Days was even better. I've been a fan of his work ever since, and I'm pleased to also be able to call him a pal.

Friday, December 08, 2006

To See: The Holiday

For all the fun, actiony, spooky stuff that I talk about on this blog, there's really nothing I like better than a good romantic comedy. That's why I dig shows like The Gilmore Girls, Grey's Anatomy, and Men in Trees.

Anyway, The Holiday looks like it could be a good romantic comedy. There's a shot of Jack Black laughing in the trailer that looks really contrived and forced, but it's out of context and the rest of it features people I like falling in love with each other in great, picturesque settings, so my fingers are crossed.

Revisiting Casino Royale

I went to see Casino Royale again last night. It's still perfect.

I bring it up only because I've been wanting to share Steven Barnes' review of it with you, and this is a good excuse.

Barnes gives labels to the two types of Bond fans that I've long known existed, but have never thought to name. "Serious" Bond fans -- like me -- usually have read the Fleming novels, prefer Doctor No and From Russia with Love to Goldfinger, and have a higher tolerance for Timothy Dalton than the other group. "Escapist" Bond fans, by far the majority of people I've met, dig Roger Moore (though usually not as much as Connery) and relish all the gadgets, one-liners, and over-the-top plots that the movies have come to be known for. Neither group is better than the other, but it's important to realize that both come to Bond movies looking for different things.

Escapist fans acknowledge that Bond may be a chauvanist or misogynist. Serious fans, as Barnes points out, know that he's really a borderline sociopathic misanthrope, "smoking and drinking himself into the grave, balancing on the edge of breakdown, capable of being wired together for one more assignment… maybe." Barnes also notes that Casino Royale is the first time we've ever seen that Bond, and that -- as justifiably revered as Sean Connery is -- he may have just been ousted from his throne as Greatest Bond of All Time:

"Connery wasn’t a great actor when he started the series. He never became a great actor, although he is a great star of fantastic virility and charisma. But Acting? Check him out in Diamonds Are Forever’s opening sequence, when he is pursuing the man who killed his dearest love. Does anyone believe the emotions displayed, even for a moment?"

Barnes calls Daniel Craig "the best actor ever to play the role" and I don't disagree. That takes nothing away from the joy of watching Connery's charisma and physicality in the part, it just means that we're on a whole, other level now.

Anyway, read all of Barnes' review. He's dead on.

Link du Jour: Christopher Mills

I discovered Christopher Mills back in my early days with Comic World News when a now-defunct website called AdventureStrips.com was nice enough to give me a comp subscription for review purposes. AdventureStrips specialized in pulp stories and I loved pretty much everything I read there, but a couple of my favorites were Gravedigger and Perils on Planet X, both by Mills.

Gravedigger is an excellent, hard-boiled crime thriller, illustrated by Rick Burchett, that's been collected into a one-shot print edition by Rorschach Entertainment. Perils on Planet X, illustrated by Jon Plante, was unfortunately never finished, but worked for me in ways that its inspiration, Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars, never had.

Mills' current work includes an online, pulp strip called Supernatural Crime that stars characters like Femme Noir, Brother Grim, and Nightmark. As Mills says on his site, "Blazing roscoes, weird menaces and dangerous dames... Who says they don't write 'em like this anymore?"

Review: The Brothers Grimm

As I was watching The Brothers Grimm, I developed a theory that maybe I don't like Terry Gilliam movies as much as I think I do. Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Fisher King, and now The Brothers Grimm are all visually wonderful movies that I feel like I should love and want to watch over and over again, but I don't.

What lets all the air out of that theory is the existence of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Time Bandits, and Twelve Monkeys; all movies that I do love and want to watch over and over again.

So it's not inherently Gilliam that I'm not connecting with, but I'm having a hard time deciding what it is about The Brothers Grimm that leaves me so unaffected. It's a vast improvement over the similarly themed Van Helsing, but that's not a very big compliment. Van Helsing made me cringe; Grimm just makes me shrug.

It's not Matt Damon and Heath Ledger. Those guys are both excellent actors and I'll watch pretty much anything that either one of them does. Ledger is especially good here in a role that's as much a surprise for him as Brad Pitt's was in Twelve Monkeys.

It's certainly not Monica Bellucci as the wicked Queen that bothered me. Yowza. I actually sorta found myself rooting for her a couple of times out of sheer enchantment.

It's not even the story itself that I dislike. The concept is a pretty good one: the Grimm brothers are a pair of travelling con men who prey on village superstitions in order to make money. They come into a town that's rumored to cursed by this ghost or that witch; perform an impressive, but fake exorcism; then scoot before anyone's the wiser. Wilhelm (Matt Damon) is completely pragmatic about their job and doesn't believe that spirits actually exist. Jacob (Heath Ledger), on the other hand, desperately wants to believe that he's part of a larger story involving the supernatural. That difference in worldview puts them in conflict with each other (though the movie unfortunately waits longer than it should to reveal it), especially since Jacob's "naivety" once cost them the life of their sister.

I put "naivety" in quotes, because of course Jacob's not naïve. When the brothers are captured by Napolean's invasion army and forced to put a stop to a series of kidnappings in a nearby village, they soon realize that something very spooky and real is going on. There's also a subplot in which the brothers find themselves rivals for the affection of one of the village girls (Lena Headey).

There's enough going on and enough dramatic conflict that The Brothers Grimm could've been a solid movie. None of the conflict is particularly inspired, but the right dialogue could've made it interesting. Unfortunately, that never happens and we get an X-Files-derived, but otherwise generic, romantic comedy. Although -- it can't be said too often -- a gorgeous one.

Even the fairy tale elements -- things that happen in the village that will supposedly one day inspire the brothers' stories -- fail to live up to the potential of the idea. One of the kidnapping victims happens to wear a little, red, riding cloak. Another, named Greta, gets lost in the woods with her brother Hans, in spite of having left a trail of bread crumbs. Another girl is sucked into a mud-creature of some kind, which then flattens itself and inexplicably refers to itself as a "gingerbread man." An enchanted woodsman turns -- again, without explanation -- into a wolf. It all seems very forced, as if the idea to have the brothers' tales be inspired by their adventure in the village was a late suggestion. The exceptions to that are the Queen, who has elements of Snow White and Rapunzel that make sense in her story, and a clever bit that humorously gives a possible real-world explanation for the Frog Prince story.

One last gripe I have is about the character of Cavaldi (Peter Stormare), an Italian torturer who's sent along to keep an eye on the brothers and make sure that they fulfill their obligation to Napolean's army. His accent is mostly indecipherable and he's sadistic to the point of ridiculousness, right up until the point where the plot requires him to suddenly change his personality so that he wants to help the brothers rather than menace them.

Still, the movie looks great and any imagination lacking in the script has been poured ten-fold into the visuals. Gilliam's created an enchanted place that's worthy of fairy tales. It's just maddeningly unfortunate that the story told there isn't worthy of the setting.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

To See: 300

I've intended on seeing 300 for as long as I knew it was being adapted to movie form, but that's more out of my interest in the actual historical event than the fact that it's based on a Frank Miller graphic novel. The half of Miller's stuff that I like (Sin City, Batman: Year One, Dark Knight Returns, etc.), I really like. The half that I don't care so much for (Spawn, Dark Knight Strikes Again, All-Star Batman and Robin, etc.), makes me not automatically assume that I'm going to like something just because it's got his name on it.

My anticipation of 300 has been pretty low-key until lately, because all the promotional imagery I saw for it was just a bunch of folks standing around in front of blue screens. What's changed and made me full-on excited for this movie, is that the trailer has come out. 300 is going to be a stunningly beautiful film.

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

To See: Arthur and the Invisibles

I said before that I'm a sucker for stories about kids that get transported into magical worlds. Arthur and the Invisibles looks like a great example of that kind of story done perfectly as a movie. Arthur inhabits a beautifully photographed, live-action world until he enters the world of the Invisibles where he's converted to the same, stunningly detailed CGI that they are. The trailer's got a fantastic, storybook quality to it.

And David Bowie voices the bad guy.

Link du Jour: Brad Meltzer

When DC announced back in the day that Kevin Smith's stint as writer of Green Arrow wasn't going to last forever, I was as concerned as most other Green Arrow fans that the next guy be up to snuff. Smith's run on the book was a freakin' thrill to read, so who could possibly compare?

I didn't know who Brad Meltzer was, but when they announced him I was a little encouraged that he was a successful novelist who liked sneaking geeky comic references into his books. That meant he had both the talent and the passion to do a good job on what, at the time, was my favorite superhero. As I read his Green Arrow story, "The Archer's Quest," I wasn't disappointed.

Meltzer's story was very different from Smith's in feel, but it communicated that same love of What Had Come Before that Smith's did. And it ended with a shocking revelation about Green Arrow that, while completely in-character for the hero, completely changed the way I looked at him as well. Later, reading interviews with Meltzer, I learned that that was the point.

His effectiveness in doing so is hotly debated amongst comics fans, but I admire Meltzer's desire to leave characters profoundly changed by the stories he tells about them. The biggest weakness of corporate-owned superhero comics is the pressure to maintain the status quo, and even if I don't always agree with a particular point in his execution, I love that Meltzer has the desire (and the political clout) to tell daring stories with these characters.

I also love his attitude about genres. I got to interview him once and asked him about it. "I think they're a trap," he said, "simply because a 'genre' implies rules. And there's no greater restriction to writing than to say a certain story has to have 'rules.' A thriller needs nothing more than danger to the protagonist and a good story. You don't need a love interest, or a private eye, or a stunning courtroom scene. It needs nothing but a good story. It can be a Western with dogs -- but if it's good, it's good."

New Comics: 12/6/06

So, here's what's hitting comic stores today.

And here's what I'm planning on picking up:

52 #31
Witchblade #102
Agents of Atlas #5
Incredible Hulk #101
Athena Voltaire: Flight of the Falcon (Ape Edition) #3

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

To See: Time of the Apes (MST3K Version)

A local cartoonist wrote on his blog recently that there's a Japanese version of Planet of the Apes called Time of the Apes. I shouldn't be surprised, but I was. Unfortunately, it sounds like as big a turd as Frankenstein Conquers the World.

According to the Amazon plot summary: "Three bumbling morons accidentally stumble into a cryogenic freezer and end up in the future, where monkeys populate the Earth" and "are ruled themselves by a supercomputer named 'UECOM,' which is a malevolent artificial being created by humans."

It sounds unwatchable, except that Mystery Science Theater 3000 did an episode on it and that would be worth seeing. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, that episode hasn't been released on DVD yet. Someday though. Someday...

Link du Jour: Neil Gaiman

I feel completely presumptuous and silly writing about how anyone should check out and love Neil Gaiman, as if everyone in the world hadn't already checked out and fallen in love with him.

But, I said that I was going to go through my links list and talk about each one, and so I will. Except that a month ago -- on his birthday -- I already said everything I want to say about him.

So, yeah. Neil Gaiman. If you don't love him, it's because you haven't read him. But, of course, you have.

Friday, December 01, 2006

Happy Nero Wolfe Day!

I was on the road for most of the day on my day job, so not much posting today. It is worth mentioning though that it's Rex Stout's 120th birthday.

I get my love of mystery stories from my mom, and Stout's Nero Wolfe character was one of her favorite detectives. Stout published 46 novels in the Nero Wolfe series, starting with Fer-de-Lance in 1934, which he'd written two years earlier at the age of 46.

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