Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, Ltd.

This article marks the last of the reposts from the old R&G, Ltd. site.  I intend to continue this series, by the way, and post reviews of the next two books in the Martian Trilogy by Edgar Rice Burroughs. – duane

August 5, 2007
Review – A Princess of Mars
Filed under: Literature, SciFi/Fantasy — duane @ 7:26 am

Edgar Rice Burroughs is better known outside of scifi and fantasy circles as the creator of Tarzan, but like many writers during the pulp era, he wrote in several different genres. In scifi, his principle contribution has been Barsoom novels, which contributed to a genre of pulp fiction known as “sword and planet” stories. While these type of stories are often called science fiction, they have more in common with fantasy; what little science they contain is very fuzzy and is basically magic in scientific trappings. Read the rest of this entry »

Front Row Crew – GeekNights » Blog Archive » Why it has to be “The Squid”.

GeekNights is one of my favorite podcasts, and they are huge Watchmen fans.  Scott, one of the two hosts, posted a short audio response to the change in the ending of Watchmen in the film version.  I have to admit that it had been so long since I read the original that I missed the ending change, but Scott’s argument is very well made, althought he admits that he hadn’t seen the movie yet (this was posted on March 5).  I’m going to be rereading it and posting my thoughts about it, so I’ll cover my thoughts about the ending when I get there.  If you’ve already watched the movie and read the graphic novel, then give this a listen.

Jen and I have just gotten back from Watchmen. (Currently, she’s looking up actors in the movie to see what else they’ve been in.) In getting ready for watching it, I did something that might seem counter to the normal way of doing things: I did not reread the graphic novel before hand. This is a case where I didn’t want my ideas about the comic to influence too deeply my opinion of the film. I know that sounds counter-intuitive; after all, those of us in the “geek cultures” of things like Lord of the Rings and comic books love to break down the adaptations into their components and compare those to our beloved works. But I wanted to approach this movie as it is and consider the work as an adaptation later. I can never, of course, be one of those for whom this movie is their first exposure to the work, but it’s been long enough since I’ve read Watchmen that I didn’t have every particle of the book in my mind, criticizing the film as I watched it.

By the way, the purpose of this article, as the title says, is just to get a few thoughts down, to sketch my initial impressions of the movie. It might be a while before I see it again (when the DVD is released, perhaps), so I want to jot down a few things before the memory fades.

I also want to follow up this article with a series of posts chronicling my rereading of the graphic novel. I got the idea from a series of blogs on tor.com, in which someone reread Lord of the Rings and chronicled their impressions of it. I think that might be an interesting idea to do for this and other works that I regard as classics, so look forward to that in the (hopefully) near future.

Now onto the sketch. Read the rest of this entry »

August 14, 2007
Catch Me if You Can and The Aviator
Filed under: Movies — duane @ 9:13 pm

My wife, Jen, and I recently watched a couple of DiCaprio movies that we had gotten in from NetFlix. Normally I would post a review of each of these movies separately, but since I’m not sure that I’ll actually watch these again anytime soon, I thought I would just get some of my thoughts down about each movie.

The first one we watched was Catch Me if You Can, which is based on the real-life Frank Abegnale, Jr., a teenager-turned-con-artist and forger. I have actually seen the real episode of To Tell the Truth that the movie opens with, so it was kinda cool to see it briefly with DiCaprio. The story is even more amazing given that it’s based on a true on; sure, there were certain liberties that were taken with it, but the idea of a teenager successfully impersonating an airline pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer, all while forging checks was really interesting. Read the rest of this entry »

In teaching Macbeth in my English IV classes this year, I have searched out various productions of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, Macbeth. Before this year I had never seen Polanski’s 1971 film of the play, but I found several activities that use it and so finally watched it.  There are several criticisms of the play, and responding to and considering each of those is going to be the primary focus of this article. Read the rest of this entry »

August 11, 2007
Adventures in Bad Sci-Fi – Bloodsuckers
Filed under: Movies, SciFi/Fantasy, bad scifi — duane @ 5:44 pm

I have always had a love/hate relationship with the SciFi Channel. For a sf/fantasy fan like myself, the concept is awesome. Unfortunately, throughout the years the execution has often left a lot to be desired. While one would think I would watch the channel a lot, the truth is I don’t. I haven’t cared for most of their original series, and even those with a premise I liked (such as Eureka) I just haven’t been that compelled to watch. And for every step they take forward, they always take at least one back. For example, it’s cool that they’re showing the new Doctor Who, but then they also show ECW wrestling, which has, as far as I can tell, no connection to scifi, fantasy, or horror.

With that said, one of the things I love about the SciFi Channel is one that I should probably hate: original SciFi Channel movies. These come in two types: mediocre movies that are neither good nor bad, and therefore are incredibly boring (such as Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula, which I was going to review after this one, but just wasn’t interesting enough), or they are so incredibly bad that, as the cliché goes, they circle back around to good again. Thus, every Saturday and Sunday (when I remember), I check out the program guide for potentially bad scifi, fantasy, or horror movies.

Bloodsuckers, also known as Vampire Wars: Battle for the Universe, is one of these movies. Read the rest of this entry »

August 1, 2007
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Filed under: Literature, SciFi/Fantasy — duane @ 8:34 pm

I’ve talked about Harry Potter before, so it should be no secret that I’m a big fan. It’s also no secret that that last book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was going to be a good book. We know by now that Rowling is a good writer, that she has created interesting characters, and that the story-line is compelling. And the majority of people already know if they’re interested in Harry Potter or not; while some people may have been waiting for the series to end before reading it, and others may pick it up later, a review of Deathly Hallows is not likely to inspire anyone to read it. I’m therefore just going to make a few comments about it, and save any potential spoilers for a larger article on the series as a whole. Read the rest of this entry »

In order to get the site going, I’m going to repost some old content, picking through some things that I particularly liked. Of course, I didn’t do a proper backup (Who needs backups? Certainly not me!), so I’m copying a few articles from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. I’ll have them up in a bit.

The old site had sat still for so long that someone hacked it. I’ve redone the security credentials and started from scratch. Hopefully this means I’ll actually start putting up meaningful content.