It’s Academy Awards time, and that means it’s once again time for me to weigh in with my ignorance and inability to appreciate an Oscar-worthy performance. If you’re like me, you’ll want to cram-watch a few more of the nominees in time to at least have an opinion for the awards next week. Let me…
Author: alving4
Midseason TV 2015
Midseason is here again. It’s that time of year when TV networks (and a growing number of non-TV channels who are delivering episodic content) take a second run at catching the audience’s attention. It’s usually a time when some of the more outlandish/inventive shows come on, which the programming execs might have thought were too…
Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey – Book Review
I was surprisingly disappointed by Leviathan Wakes, which is the first of a series of books now headed to tv on the US SyFy channel as “The Expanse”. They characterize the show as a Game of Thrones set in space, so that gave me all kinds of expectations of an array of interesting characters and…
2014 Blockbuster Movie Review Catch-up
Before the bell rings on 2014 and rings in 2015, I wanted to give my two cents on a few of the blockbuster movies that blew away the box office in 2014 (but I missed catching them at the theatres). Guardians of the Galaxy Marvel’s leap into space adventures had a US opening weekend of…
2014 TV Characters: Love and Hate
Some say that TV is going through a quality renaissance. That might be true, but unfortunately if you have enjoyed hard-edged shows like True Detective, Broadchurch, American Horror Story, or Breaking Bad for their wonderfully complex and messed-up characters, you won’t find any of those shows on my list. I tend to enjoy the lighter,…
Unholy Night by Seth Grahame-Smith – Book Review
Featured image is Diamond Star by Brian Yi (please click the link to see the full image — it’s nice.) Seth Grahame-Smith is the author who brought zombies to Pride and Prejudice, and turned America’s “great emancipator”, Abraham Lincoln, into a vampire hunter. He’s been tipping some of the sacred cows of literature and history for…
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 – Movie Review
Having recently read (and reviewed) the book, the last part (lucratively split into two films) of the Katniss Everdeen story was still pretty fresh in my mind when I went to see the movie. I knew to expect that the saga that began with a teenage girl bravely competing in a dystopian to-the-death competition has…
Big Hero 6 – Movie Review
Big Hero 6 represents the true coming-together of Disney and Marvel universes (even moreso than being able to play The Hulk alongside snow-queen Elsa in the videogame world of Disney Infinity). Disney animators (with no small influence from their Pixar brethren) have taken an obscure Marvel Comics super-team and brought them to cute, plastic life…
Capsule Book Review Catchup
Now that I am listening to audiobooks on my commute to and from work, I’m catching up on so many books that I’ve got a backlog of books to write about on my blog. Of course, this is all thanks to Audible.com (Free credits for the plug, please!) which has been a great way for…
