Check out my review of Paul Steven Stone's Book "How To Train A Rock."
Video also posted after the break.
Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Review--Highlander: the Source
AAAAAGGHH! Urgh, ugh, ugga, aack, eraaack, aaataa.*
*the sounds my brain made as it tried to strangle itself.
Rest of the post after the break.
The movie is STUPID.
Now that that is out of my system, I can continue. I am a huge Highlander fan. I have been since roughly 1992 when I saw the first Highlander movie on tv as a precursor to the then new tv series. I saw the abominations that were II and III, and began to think of Duncan from the tv show as the only real Highlander. Now, after having suffered through both Endgame and the Source, I am re-evaluating my entire thought process.
I watched just about every episode when they aired or shortly thereafter. When the SciFi channel had them in rerun slots in the early 2000s, I used to watch them then too. My best friend and I had copies of Queen's It's a Kind of Magic and used to listen to "Princes of the Universe" while driving not long after we got our licenses. I had a Highlander poster and desperately wanted a repro-claymore and a dragon-headed katana. I own 3 of the seasons on DVD and am trying to collect the rest. I own all the movies (except the Source). I say all of this to highlight how much of a fanboy I was. I was so bad, in fact, I even made excuses for horrible plot holes and tried to rationalize everything stupid that has ever been done in the name of Highlander, including the spin-off tv shows.
So, when I tell you to think back to my recent review of Hawk the Slayer, and to consider what I wrote about Hawk being the singular worst movie I've ever seen, and then tell you, right now, that Highlander: the Source has promoted Hawk the Slayer to only the second worst movie I've ever watched, you'll have an idea of just how much I detested this loathsome film. There is nothing, and I will repeat that, nothing redeemable about this movie. The fact that the principle cast from the tv show would even remotely consider wanting to be associated with this mountain of rotted human sewage has lowered their esteem in my eyes to that of a bilge rat. I can't even bring myself to describe the asinine "plot" because the ideas are so atrocious that they make the idea that Immortals are aliens or time-travel agents (from II, and II--the Renegade Edition, respectively) seem completely sane and rational. If the Mythbusters were to do a comparison of plot-lines within the variant source material over the years, they would prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that the idea of alien Immortals is not just plausible, but confirmed, all just to avoid even attempting to scientifically examine this crap.
If you have even one iota, one speck, one single modicum of support of the Highlander brand, or even if you have seen it and don't care either way, PLEASE don't watch this piece of intestinal muck. I'm not kidding when I say that the brand has been so tainted in my head as to make Jar-Jar Binks' effect on Star Wars seem like the most trivial nonsense. Han shooting first doesn't make me hate Lucas anywhere near as much as the Source makes me despise everything about the entire Highlander universe.
Have I made myself clear?
/rant
*the sounds my brain made as it tried to strangle itself.
Rest of the post after the break.
The movie is STUPID.
Now that that is out of my system, I can continue. I am a huge Highlander fan. I have been since roughly 1992 when I saw the first Highlander movie on tv as a precursor to the then new tv series. I saw the abominations that were II and III, and began to think of Duncan from the tv show as the only real Highlander. Now, after having suffered through both Endgame and the Source, I am re-evaluating my entire thought process.
I watched just about every episode when they aired or shortly thereafter. When the SciFi channel had them in rerun slots in the early 2000s, I used to watch them then too. My best friend and I had copies of Queen's It's a Kind of Magic and used to listen to "Princes of the Universe" while driving not long after we got our licenses. I had a Highlander poster and desperately wanted a repro-claymore and a dragon-headed katana. I own 3 of the seasons on DVD and am trying to collect the rest. I own all the movies (except the Source). I say all of this to highlight how much of a fanboy I was. I was so bad, in fact, I even made excuses for horrible plot holes and tried to rationalize everything stupid that has ever been done in the name of Highlander, including the spin-off tv shows.
So, when I tell you to think back to my recent review of Hawk the Slayer, and to consider what I wrote about Hawk being the singular worst movie I've ever seen, and then tell you, right now, that Highlander: the Source has promoted Hawk the Slayer to only the second worst movie I've ever watched, you'll have an idea of just how much I detested this loathsome film. There is nothing, and I will repeat that, nothing redeemable about this movie. The fact that the principle cast from the tv show would even remotely consider wanting to be associated with this mountain of rotted human sewage has lowered their esteem in my eyes to that of a bilge rat. I can't even bring myself to describe the asinine "plot" because the ideas are so atrocious that they make the idea that Immortals are aliens or time-travel agents (from II, and II--the Renegade Edition, respectively) seem completely sane and rational. If the Mythbusters were to do a comparison of plot-lines within the variant source material over the years, they would prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that the idea of alien Immortals is not just plausible, but confirmed, all just to avoid even attempting to scientifically examine this crap.
If you have even one iota, one speck, one single modicum of support of the Highlander brand, or even if you have seen it and don't care either way, PLEASE don't watch this piece of intestinal muck. I'm not kidding when I say that the brand has been so tainted in my head as to make Jar-Jar Binks' effect on Star Wars seem like the most trivial nonsense. Han shooting first doesn't make me hate Lucas anywhere near as much as the Source makes me despise everything about the entire Highlander universe.
Have I made myself clear?
/rant
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
New review
I'm working on my review of Book of Beasts, a poetry collection of creatures set up much like the bestiaries of Dungeons and Dragons and ancient texts written by notables like Pliny and Herodotus. The collection contains 2 poems for each letter of the alphabet, each letter being assigned to a different creature. But the poems aren't about the creatures themselves, or are least only tangential to the beasts. That's not to say it's good or bad, but I'm having a tough time deciding whether I like the collection or not. It stands together well, and some of the poems are decent, but--I don't know. Something just feels--off.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Poetry Book Review - Falling Forward by Rebecca Schumejda
Link to Original publication
Falling Forward by Rebecca Schumejda
Copyright 2008
sunnyoutside
PO Box 911
Buffalo, NY 14207
ISBN: 978-1-935613-12-5
Rebecca Schumejda’s titular poem is also the last one in the collection, set off by its own section heading and center justified. It’s a special poem that acts as a sort of afterword and comments, in a fairly direct manner, on the collection as a whole. The image one gets is of a prayer, but not just any prayer—a prayer of supplication in the face of adversity.
More after the break
Indeed, the collection as a whole works on that level. The section titles are all lines or images from the title poem, “The Truth Is Too Heavy,” “Folded Like Two Hands in Prayer,” “Overgrown with Weeds and Regrets,” and “Falling Forward.”
The first poem begins “This afternoon / I buried your cat / while you were at work.” It is economical language broken into clauses, but the enjambed first line lends a sense of tension, which is borne out through the rest of the poem. The narrator dreads the idea of relating this event when her significant other returns home from a day at work.
Other poems follow a similar theme—two characters with distance between them, avoiding topics that need to be addressed and fumbling through crumbling or crumbled relationships, all in an attempt to maintain grip on the ungrippable.
This tension between the things that ought to be said and things that are not said creates a space of broken relationships and cross-purpose discussions. It’s similar to a Pinter play in that the space between spoken thoughts is as much a character as the actual characters within the poems.
Ultimately, the reader is left with the last poem as an answer to all the problems within. “Falling Forward” is an apt description of the lives of Schumejda’s characters. They don’t so much move through time as stumble, trying to keep their feet in an uneven world. But “[w]hen the truth is too heavy…[t]here’s no way to avoid failure,” says the narrator. This is the very essence, the underlying motif of each poem, that the only thing you can do is “just lean forward / let your knees cushion your fall.”
Very much recommended.
Falling Forward by Rebecca Schumejda
Copyright 2008
sunnyoutside
PO Box 911
Buffalo, NY 14207
ISBN: 978-1-935613-12-5
Rebecca Schumejda’s titular poem is also the last one in the collection, set off by its own section heading and center justified. It’s a special poem that acts as a sort of afterword and comments, in a fairly direct manner, on the collection as a whole. The image one gets is of a prayer, but not just any prayer—a prayer of supplication in the face of adversity.
More after the break
Indeed, the collection as a whole works on that level. The section titles are all lines or images from the title poem, “The Truth Is Too Heavy,” “Folded Like Two Hands in Prayer,” “Overgrown with Weeds and Regrets,” and “Falling Forward.”
The first poem begins “This afternoon / I buried your cat / while you were at work.” It is economical language broken into clauses, but the enjambed first line lends a sense of tension, which is borne out through the rest of the poem. The narrator dreads the idea of relating this event when her significant other returns home from a day at work.
Other poems follow a similar theme—two characters with distance between them, avoiding topics that need to be addressed and fumbling through crumbling or crumbled relationships, all in an attempt to maintain grip on the ungrippable.
This tension between the things that ought to be said and things that are not said creates a space of broken relationships and cross-purpose discussions. It’s similar to a Pinter play in that the space between spoken thoughts is as much a character as the actual characters within the poems.
Ultimately, the reader is left with the last poem as an answer to all the problems within. “Falling Forward” is an apt description of the lives of Schumejda’s characters. They don’t so much move through time as stumble, trying to keep their feet in an uneven world. But “[w]hen the truth is too heavy…[t]here’s no way to avoid failure,” says the narrator. This is the very essence, the underlying motif of each poem, that the only thing you can do is “just lean forward / let your knees cushion your fall.”
Very much recommended.
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