The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

Having only read one other Anne Rice novel (you guessed it, Interview With the Vampire), I learned some interesting things about her from reading her beefy 1990 tome, The Witching Hour.  I learned that she can make a book interesting even if there are actually no vampires in it.  I learned that New Orleans, in addition to being a magical place indeed, has some really beautiful flowers.  And I learned that Anne Rice sure knows a lot of different ways to describe human genitalia.

So yes, the book is interesting and even engrossing in parts and starts off with real promise. In the bar of a New York hotel a doctor remembers a most disturbing assignment – administering tranquilizing drugs to a young, catatonic woman named Deirdre.  But rather than living as a patient in a mental hospital, Deirdre sits, stupefied, in a rocking chair on the porch of her decaying antebellum home in New Orleans’ Garden District and is tended to by her elderly aunts.

Rice drops a lot of hints in these early pages that will take on greater significance later (the emerald Deirdre wears and the name Lasher for starters), but oddly enough the doctor is not one of them.  He’s really more of a human MacGuffin than anything else.  But here and throughout most of the book, Rice takes a long damn time to describe things and often does so multiple times with the same things.  I could probably pass a college course in botany for all I read about the beauty and delicacy of New Orleans flora.

The rest of the first part introduces us to the main characters.  First there’s Michael Curry, a contractor and home restoration expert living in San Francisco and suffering from the aftermath of a near drowning.  That aftermath, namely, is his newfound ability to touch people or objects and receive a flood of images concerning their past.  His new power is exciting at first but quickly becomes a curse, and so Curry locks himself away and takes up alcoholism in his spare time.

…keep digging Book report: The Witching Hour

If it accomplishes nothing else as a film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince provides plenty of grist for the mill of debate over the pitfalls of translating literature to the big screen.  Because I think how you feel about this movie will hinge in large part upon your expectations of its fidelity to the source material.  So let’s get this right out of the way, in case you’re one of the dozen or so people who haven’t seen the movie or read J.K. Rowling’s book – this film is more of an interpretation of the sixth Harry Potter novel than a straight adaptation.

I took a rather forgiving approach to the omissions, additions, and changes made by screenwriter Steve Kloves but even I must admit to some puzzlement over some of his decisions.  For the sake of brevity I’ll mention just a few – having Dumbledore meet Harry at a Muggle train station rather than at the Dursley household, and leaving Harry free to help Dumbledore as he faced death but seemingly unwilling to do so.  I could go on, but there enough alterations (some pointless, some understandable) present throughout the entire movie that keeping track of them became impossible.

…keep digging GFS at the Movies: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Of course you can.  At least you’ll have to, since the movie’s release is inexplicably being pushed back until July 2009.  Thanks a lot, ignoramus studio executives!

Oh yeah, the trailer.  It looks even darker than the previous movies, which of course is to be expected, but the touch of humor at the end is most welcome.  What’s not welcome is the continuing de-evolution of Rupert Grint (aka Ron Weasley), whose face looks like it continues to suffer the ravages of the full moon.

I didn’t write about Heroes much (at all) last season, and for good reason.  After a brilliant debut, the second season pretty much redefined “letdown”.  You know this, the fans know this, and even creator Tim Kring knows this.  So the show’s third volume – “Villains”, which debuted with two episodes last night – is crucial to the success of the third season and the show’s future.

It’s going to take some time for me to really immerse myself back into the world of Heroes again, but so far so good.  The balance between action and drama – draction – was just about right.  Seeing as the last new episode aired about 10 months ago, I found it surprisingly easy to pick up the show’s various storylines.  That probably also has to do with some of the lamer ones being done or forgotten entirely.

So let’s start with the positive – adding new villains to the mix is a good idea.  I loves me some Sylar, but without the element of surprise or mystery he enjoyed in the first season, he doesn’t seem quite as malevolent.  The new baddies who busted out of Primatech’s holding cells seem like a particularly amoral and violent bunch, as evidenced by their murderous protest over high gas prices.  The heroism of the show’s main characters only works convincingly when contrasted against ultimate evil, and right now Sylar doesn’t cut it anymore.

And as I mentioned earlier, there are good doses of action to go along with the more slowly developing parts.  And let’s face it – the fun in this show has nothing to do with seeing if the heroes get to save the world.  It’s frigging NBC, you know the world will not blow up on this show (not for long anyway).  So that whole conceit is a non-starter.  No, the fun part of the show is watching one set of freaky people fight the other set of freaky people.  And last night they sure got their freak on.

Even Mohinder got into the act, when he very wisely injected himself with an experimental serum designed to throw his adrenal gland into overdrive and get some powers of his own.  And true to form, it appears to be backfiring nicely, so it looks like we’ll get to see the modern equivalent of Brundlefly.  Apparently the power to get a clue will continue to elude poor Mohinder

Most importantly, it looks as if many of the main characters will be used to their full potential again.  Hiro is back in the present and is already mixing it up, and Peter seems to have found more constructive uses of his time than chasing after distressed Irish barmaids.  And even Noah Bennet is back in action after his release from Primatech.

There were only a few sour notes last night, in fact.  I know a lot of people have the hots for Ali Larter, but she really is a lousy actress and adds little to the show.  But if they have to keep her around it’s good to see they may have ditched the “Jikki” premise and given her a whole new character.  And I wasn’t entirely pleased to see the return of Maya, one half of the Weepy Latin Twins combo of season 2.  But even her tendency toward whininess was curbed somewhat by her horrible taste in men.

There are a ton of other points I could get into, but this really isn’t meant to be as much of a review/summary as it is a list of impressions. So all this is to say that I was obviously interested enough in Heroes – despite last year – to watch the first two episodes.  And while it’s still very early in the game, the signs of a turnaround for the show are present.  Whether or not the show can win back my love remains to be seen, but we’ll at least continue seeing each other for awhile longer.

Courtesy the MTV Movies Blog, we’ve got four new stills from the upcoming Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince film.  I’m sure it will just as entertaining as the previous five movies, but you wouldn’t know it from these shots:

THRILL as Draco Malfoy broods in a corner!

…keep digging Geek alert – new Harry Potter movie photos!

So it has come to this. After ten years and seven novels the magical saga of Harry Potter has finally reached its conclusion. The countdowns are over, the hype begins to subside, and the biggest question surrounding J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (besides whether Severus Snape is indeed friend or foe) can be answered – was it a worthwhile journey?

…keep digging Book review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

As J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has become increasingly dark and complex, filmmakers tackling the source material have found it more challenging to present the stories without compromising the integrity of the novels. This prickly problem first reared its head with 2004′s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the first film in the series to meet with angry rumblings from some Potter-philes.

The fifth and newest installment, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (henceforth OoP), faces the biggest challenge of all. The source novel was not only the longest of the first five (800+ pages), but it contained numerous detailed subplots and character explorations. For the film, director David Yates for the most part successfully left out what could be without making the story unrecognizable – although hardcore fans would argue that any omission, no matter how minor, is inexcusable. Other plot points are condensed or altered entirely (a large list can be found on Wikipedia) for the sake of brevity. The major events are all there however.

…keep digging Movie review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix