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. 

Tropic Thunder

This movie had a lot more moments of me saying “That is funny” than me actually laughing.  But it was still pretty funny.  The two stand out stars are Tom Cruise, who really has an extended cameo in a fat suit as an filthy mouthed hardcore studio head and Robert Downey Jr.  Downey is the funniest in the movie, especially when he is the first to figure out what is going wrong but can’t turn off his method acting.  “I am a lead farmer!”  Good stuff.

Vicky Christina Barcelona

From the trailer, I thought I had a pretty good bead on what would happen in this movie.  A bunch of pompous pretty American’s in Spain would lie and have sex and get in angst ridden relationships.  Except for the sex part, pretty much all of that was off. 

All of the characters are likeable and have their own point of view (well, except for random New Yorkers that show up in Spain to remind our characters how great Europeans are; all from NYC are boring and pretentious) and all have their own story.  I did not know where anybody’s story would end up, the movie managed to surprise me several times.  The film also is half a travelogue of Spain and Barcelona, showing us how gorgeous the whole damn place is and what idiots we are for being stuck in an office all day.

Donnie Darko

I just re-watched this for the first time in years, and what a phenomenal movie.  This time I watched the directors cut, which has almost 20 minutes more of the movie, a lot of it explaining the whole time travel deal, but a lot of it just some more character moments.  Which is really what I was looking for.  Some people get caught up with what the actual overarching plot is, but really, if you take it as the coming of age story of an odd teenager, it movie works just as well.  The characters, acting, and music are really what my main draws are for this.  One of my favorite movies.

Weeping Willow: Volume One: Welcome to River Bend

I read a free chapter of this online years ago, and it captured me even then.  This is the story of a down on his luck man getting stuck in a small quirky town and trying to put his life back together.  If this sounds like a script for a sitcom or quirky comedy, I thought so too.  It is very quirky, and very meta; the authors often interrupt the narrative to interject or have arguments with each other.  But they write very compelling characters and love writing about food.  My biggest disappointment with this novel is that despite the title, there is no sequel.

Starship Troopers 3: Marauder

The first Starship Troopers was pretty much perfect with stunning action sequences, gratuitous shower scenes and biting and frequently hilarious political satire.  The second one could not afford any great or even reasonably decent action sequences, or apparently any good writers, so we really got a crappy horror movie that had little to do with the universe set up in the first movie.  The third movie still didn’t have the budget of the first, but obviously way more than the second, as the producer and writer of the first one are back, as well as one of the stars.  And since they still can’t afford the effects budget for lavish battle sequences of the first, they emphasize the other kick ass part, all the craziness of life in the military controlled fascist future.  They have loads of those “Do You Want To Know More?” bits.  This movie was surprisingly a lot of fun, one of the best straight to DVD movies I have seen all year, and a worthy sequel of the first, if at a fourth of the budget.

Doomsday

 First, the guy directing these rip off scenes does so with a good budget and great skill.  Secondly, these scenes are so clearly a homage to the originals and there are so many of them that it is more of a love letter than anything else.  Thirdly, I loves me all of those movies, so why wouldn’t I like to see the best parts of them all together?  Also, Rhona Mitra is the bad ass heroine, and is tougher than any action woman since Ripley.  She gets the crap beaten out of her and still comes out on top and with all of her clothes on. 

This movie is some good fun.  Half of Scotland are now punk rocker cannibals with crazy tattoos and piercing and driving around in modded up cars covered in scrap metal armor while the other half are living like they are in Braveheart.  See, I always assumed Scotland was like this before the end of civilization.

North Country

During the recent Democratic primary, a lot of people talked about how sexism is more acceptable than racism in today’s society.  Being a white (well, olive skinned) male, I don’t experience it that much, but if you think about it, it is true.  Also, racism being a bigger deal, we are more used to it, everybody has seen movies dealing with slavery or the South during the Civil Rights era; we kind of know what to expect.

All of which is a lead up to saying that this movie deals with sexism and sexual harassment in and out of the work place in the US in the 80’s and it is brutal.  Some of the things that happened in this movie were so mean, so degrading that I felt as if the breath was sucked out of my lungs.  I actually had to pause the movie just to calm down during this.  While there is a scene of an actual assault and of a rape, these don’t take up that much time and are not actually as intense as the casual degradation and animosity shown to the women just trying to work and survive in the coal mines in this movie.  The treatment they receive is constant and hate filled and really shows up throughout their lives, in and outside of work.  Again, this isn’t the 1800s or Saudi Arabia or Somalia, this is the late 80s and in Wisconsin.  This is certainly no date movie, but is a definite eye opener to show the plight of some women and how bad things were and likely still are in many places.

London Bridges

I was at somewhat of a disadvantage with this book, as almost all of the characters are returning, and is apparently the 10^th novel involving this protagonist.  However, that really didn’t impact the problem I had with this book.  A master terrorist hooks up with a master serial killer to dumfound a detective and hold the world at ransom.  Not a bad idea, but really this book is something of a pre-9/11 holdover.  The two main criminals get away with a ridiculous number of feats and crimes and acts of terrorism.  They have basically unlimited resources and contacts and nobody is safe from them.  It gets a bit ridiculous after a while.  I mean, from the news we know how hard it is to coordinate a single terrorist attack, not to mention multiples in weeks around the world, leaving no witnesses, killing everybody involved, then killing your enemy’s families and on and on and never getting caught, never leaving clues.  The whole book is basically a super villain cackling at us mere mortals; the only time the good guys ever get ahead is through sheer luck or when it is part of the bad guy’s plan.

Southland Tales

Hey, remember how in Donnie Darko (the same guy wrote/directed this one) all the crazy and mysterious stuff that was going on made you more curious as to what was going on and even if you didn’t get it it was ok, because you cared about the characters and the setting was compelling?  Well this movie is full of cryptic remarks and mysteries and actors I like and I found it dull and annoying.  There are 2 graphic novels preceding this and a 5 minute voice over trying to explain the world this takes place in and I have no idea what is supposed to be happening or why.  Or why I should care.  There is so much promise here, so many weird things going on, it is not worth it at all.

Get Smart

Man, I loves me some Steve Carrell, but the concept from the original tv show that didn’t transfer was that Maxwell Smart only solved the mysteries or crimes or whatever through luck and fumbling.  In the movie, Smart is actually really a really great agent, just a little un-experienced.  Also, the chick falls for him like straight away.  Steve Carrell doesn’t have one real challenge in the whole movie.