At first glance, Justified looks like the illegitimate love child of The Dukes of Hazard and Law and Order. Being a fan of neither show, I skipped the first season. Earlier this year, I saw a playful promo for the show where the main character was discussing the Han Solo vs. Greedo “Who shot first?” debate. This ad said, “Alright, give it a shot.” On the recommendation of the commercial, I borrowed the first season from a friend and gave the show a shot. Gripped by the backwoods antics of Deputy US Marshall Raylan Givens, I watched the entire season in…
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Here’s the thing about writing for young adults: it’s extremely difficult to avoid being either too cutesy or too mature. Robert Kirkman (Invincible, The Walking Dead), through his signature blend of silly humor and nonstop action, deftly navigates the precarious Young Adult terrain in the new series Super Dinosaur, the first issue of which was released this week by Image Comics. Helped immensely by Jason Howard’s clean lines and smooth visual storytelling, Super Dinosaur provides young adult readers with just the right blend of adventure and comedy to keep them wanting more by the time the issue comes to its…
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Hanna is a film that flies in the face of modern Hollywood conventions. It’s an action film that has very little bloodshed, and more than that, it’s an action film which actually makes me care about the characters. Director Joe Wright, maker of 2009′s The Soloist and 2007′s Atonement, has created a tightly-constructed film brimming with heart and style. And you know what else? It’s a really good movie. The film opens on a solitary girl stalking a deer across a frozen wilderness. The audience has no idea who this person is, or why she thinks this deer needs to…
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It’s odd. I read Makers from Cory Doctorow towards the end of 2010, and I’ve read 10 novels (including another of Doctorow’s) and half a dozen non-fiction books since, and yet Makers is still on my mind. This is a novel of imagination and depth, and it stays with you. It is quite extraordinary. Having recently read the novel before Makers, called Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, I felt compelled to record my thoughts. And yet, I’m not sure what they are, or where that compulsion comes from. Makers is far from the best book I’ve ever read….
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Difficult follow-up syndrome is common in the music industry. The pressure of following up a hugely influential album often results in a confused, underwhelming effort that tries to succeed on all fronts, while somehow failing to satisfy on any of them. Some bands try to counteract this by opting for an intentionally “arty” or difficult follow-up. Unfortunately, trying to be artistic is like trying to be cool — if you’re trying, then you’re doing it wrong. MGMT’s Congratulations album from last year is a good example of this. The other, more common, method is to simply try and recreate the…
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April 20th is upon us again and with it comes the typical celebrations of the marijuana counterculture. This year, Image Comics have teamed up with Ziggy Marley, front man of the Melody Makers and eldest son of Bob Marley, to produce the story of Marijuana Man. It is the story of an alien named Sedona from the distant planet of Yelram who has traveled to Earth in search of something that will save the dying people of his home world. While based off an idea by Ziggy Marley, the book itself is written by Joe Casey. To many, the story…
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I read a lot of fantasy novels. I am in no way some sort of expert critic on the subject, but I am passionate about my favorites, and I can at least check off that I have read a series over 15 books long. One series in particular that I am passionate about is the Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin. Ring any bells? The series title might not, but its first book, A Game of Thrones, will surely pique your interests. Just this past Sunday, HBO presented its premiere episode of Game of Thrones, the television show…
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Let me start this off by saying that I’m a huge Iain M Banks fan. He is a member of a very small group of authors whose work I will buy the moment I see it, although I have not read any of the works that he publishes under the name Iain Banks, which are more mainstream fiction books when compared to the sprawling space opera science fiction published under his alternative nom de plume. Starting with Consider Phlebas in 1987 and through to his latest, Surface Detail, this Scottish author has alternated between publishing science fiction and mainstream fiction. This…
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Those who know me know that I’m not a great fan of the majority of music produced by my fellow Kiwis — call it my guilty displeasure. So it was with some reservations that I started to listen to a debut album by Birds of Passage, whom I’d not heard of before, but had come personally recommended to me by Sophie from the UK’s Her Name Is Calla. To my surprise, Without The World was a New Zealand album that provided a chillingly beautiful listening experience, and broke the mould of beige local music for me. Birds of Passage is…
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I’m kind of a fan of unreliable narrators. Chief Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest made the story all the more realistic and interesting, most of Faulkner’s characters are off their rockers or children, and it’s always fun to argue over whether or not Odysseus can be trusted as a narrator. I mostly like unreliable narrators, but Ishmael in Moby-Dick is not so much unreliable as he is irritating as hell. As I observed on Twitter, he’s the annoying, over-enthusiastic hipster on the boat, and from the reaction that remark got there (and mine is a highly literate…
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