Black Hawk Down (Book)
This spent ages on the NYT bestseller list, and well deserved it.  The author Mark Bowen writes a furious action-documentary, with frantic action sequences and characters you care about.  The fact that all of this actually happened only adds another layer to the reading experience.  The author captures a modern military adventure covering a little over 16 hours as things keep on going wrong, I was amazed at how much punishment men and vehicles could take.

Many of the vehicles were running out of ammo.  They had expended thousands of rounds.  Three of the twenty-four Somali prisoners were dead and one was wounded.  The back ends of the remaining trucks and Humvees were slick with blood.  There were chunks of viscera clinging to the floors and inner walls.  McKnight's lead Humvee had two flat tires, both on the right side.  The vehicles were meant to run on flats, but at nowhere near normal speed.  The second Humvee in line was almost totally disabled.  It was dragging an axle and was being pushed by the five-ton behind it, the one that had been hit by the grenade that killed Kowalewski.  The Humvee driven by the SEALs, the third in line, had three flat tires and was so pockmarked with bullet holes it looked like a sponge.  SEAL Howard Wasdin who had been shot in both legs, had them draped up over the dash and stretched out on the hood.  Some of the Humvees were smoking.  Carlson's had a gaping grenade wound in the side and four flat tires.

Black Hawk Down (Movie)
Suffers in comparison to the book, realism wise, as this has been Hollywooded up, but is still a real and visceral action movie and is quite faithful to the book.  There is still the experience of disbelief as more and more Americans are shot and injured.  I also applaud that despite the fairly star heavy cast, they kept all of the leads in full uniform, with buzz cuts and helmets so that they were almost all interchangeable looking, just like real soldiers.

The Prydain Chronicles: The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer, and The High King
Imagine if you will, The Lord of the Rings series of books, just 35 times easier to read.  This series of five books (I read it all in one hardcover) derives from a refreshingly untapped Welsh mythology and you get to see some real and really satisfying character growth from the first page to the last.  Well worth a read for children or adults.

He's Just Not That Into You
The parts where they dealt with and followed the actual "H.J.N.T.I.Y" philosophy was actually pretty acerbic and refreshing.  Of course, a whole movie about people making canny relationship decisions probably wouldn't fly, so most problems get worked out in the end; what a cop-out.  Two notes about some of the actresses: it was nice to see Jennifer Connolly in something of a comedy, I don't think she got to smile once in her last five movies; and doesn't Scarlett Johansson get typecast as the naive yet sexy temptress in like every movie now?

Gotham Central – Unresolved Targets
When the Dark Knight movie came out, sales of certain Batman comic books shot up as people wanted to get a taste of comics that were similar, or helped inspire that movie.  Weirdly, nobody ever mentioned this one.  The Joker, using very conventional methods (no laughing gas or clowns) terrorizes the whole of Gotham.  We see this through the eyes of the police and Batman is very uninvolved.  I am purposefully skimping on the details, but the plot and the presentation, and some scenes are very, very similar to Dark Knight.  Excellently plotted and thought out, this is quite tense and well worth a read.

The Happening
The creepy suicides were what was done right wit this movie.  As far as what was done wrong, there are two problems with this movie.  The first is the acting.  John Leguizamo, Zooey Deschanel and Mark Wahlberg all give cramped, stilted and not very believable performances.  The second is with the antagonist. 

Did you ever see that episode of Mad About You when Yoko Ono wants Paul Reiser to film the wind?  He spends the whole episode getting more and more frustrated at his inability to figure out how to do so. 

 

Also, there is a movie to be made with people super frightened by something you can't see, smell or hear, and you are basically just waiting to die, but this apparently isn't it (it has actually been made in French and in black and white and is called La Foo Fah La a Morte).  I never felt the sense of existential dread that some of the actors are supposed be conveying.  I was never really that frightened.  The title of the movie gives it away basically, the whole movie is just a bunch of stuff...happening.  

Quarantine
Why do first person/shaky cam movies (ala Blair Witch and this movie) get no love?  I find them more immediate, more real, and not at all nausea inducing.  This movie isn't that original, but it is very intense and very stressful.  It is a bit of 28 Days Later crossed with Die Hard, infected/zombie people all stuck in one building.  Very creepy and very claustrophobic, and the main actress gets more and more scared until she is believably almost catatonic at the end.  Very scary.