So… what are you reading and/or watching?
While out and about, we picked up a copy of _American Gods_ saw a no-frills copy of Coraline on DVD for seven bucks(!) (which Amazon doesn’t even have). I’ve also been looking at that Thor movie and thinking that it looks absolutely horrible but wondering if I’m not going to end up seeing it anyway. Green Lantern! Now that looks like a movie! But anyway.
And Happy Mother’s Day! Call your mom!
My kids found Coraline, as did I, to be exceptionally disturbing. It isn’t one they watch over and over. In fact, we viewed it once and, to this day, it gathers dust on a shelf.
I’ve heard it’s old-schooly Brothers Grimm-level entertainment. Is that accurate? If the moral of the story is a good one, I can put up with a lot…
I wish I could be more help on that. It’s been over a year since we viewed it. After a quick recap on google, the girl is a bit unhappy with home life and finds a secret passage that takes her to a mirrored world where her parents are awesome, except it ends up being a trick to lure her into that world permanently.
Regardless, it was just very dark and the kids found it kind of scary. Button-eyed parents and all.
I didn’t care for American Gods, but would highly recommend both Stardust and The Graveyard Book.
I thought the film adaptation of Stardust was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. I thought Coraline was OK, I think I’m just tired of the ‘unhappy child visits imaginary land to find out their life isn’t as bad as they think’ fantasy sub-genre.
I loved American Gods and haven’t gotten around to The Graveyard Book yet.
I loved Stardust!
Hrm. Maybe this should be a post…
I also loved Stardust. But fair warning, I thought Thor was pretty decent. Marvel has just been thundering along the last decade in cranking out movies eh?
Stardust the movie was a betrayal, a travesty of one of the loveliest graphic novels ever written. I had fantasies of tying Matthew Vaughn to a cross and whipping him for a good long while. Robert DeNiro would be tied to a bench and melted Camembert cheese poured into his nostrils for screwing up Captain Shakespeare.
I bought the art package and chapbooks called A Fall of Stardust, the fundraising effort for the hospitalization of Karen Vess. I gave them, and my hardbound edition of Stardust to my daughter and soon-to-be husband. They also got my hardbound first edition Sandman books as well.
Hollywood must never be given a chance to fuck up DeMatteis’ Moonshadow.
Stardust in’t a graphic novel: it’s a prose novel with illustrations. The captain in the book was such a minor character that he didn’t even have a name.
Agreed that the movie was a botch. It was trying way too hard to be The Princess Bride, which was wholly unnecessary because we already have one of those.
Stardust first emerged as a monthly, so it goes on the shelf with the graphic novels. You’re right, insofar as it’s really a book with illustrations. It came out in the late 90s.
My son was still at home, we’d ride our bikes from Elgin to Wheaton to buy comics, then around to St Charles by way of Batavia to buy books, stashing them in my bike bag.
Probably the happiest moments of my life, getting home, getting a shower, sitting on the couch with my kid, devouring the graphical and literary goodies.
My gentle old cat sits in the window of the hotel room as it rains outside. Listening to Colossus, old-school rap meets downbeat jazz. Scrollscroll, what else is on this playlist? DJ Krush, Charlie Haden, Dust Brothers, Dan the Automator, Jamiroquai. Old school for an old man and his old cat.
Might go out for a growler of double-pull, lager meets bock, and work on another few pages of Vollmann’s Europe Central.
I just finished one of my favorite categories of naps (cat sits next to me on couch, I put controller down for a moment, wake up before dryer buzzer goes off) with John Williams playing in the background.
The Dust Brothers are old school now? Jamiroquai?
I wasn’t asleep *THAT* long!!!
Rip van Jaybird.
I finished Mieville’s The Scar, it really grew on me but I’m kinda baffled by the ending.
I need to catch up on Game of Thrones, it’s the only thing I’m watching.
I’m taking a break from reading about Hitler to read science fiction that I should have read a long time ago. Just finished Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and now I’m reading Neuromancer by William Gibson.
Did you love Snow Crash? I still haven’t read it.
I absolutely loved it! Some of the best sci-fi I’ve ever read. Wanna borrow it?