I'm vastly amused to see that the forces of religion and the forces are secularism are both apparently annoyed with Phillip Pullman and the movie based on his book.

Me? I've tried to read them. Several times. I got bogged down...from boredom. Poor fantasy, at best. I have no plans to inflict them upon my daughter, or even to go see the movie.

By raising a stink, The Catholic League (they don't represent me!) is just going to raise curiosity, and folks will go, rather than boycott, the flick. But they'll never learn.

(I do congratulate The Catholic League for sticking with the books and reading them to develop all these half-assed theories, though. Much better than feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, bringing justice to the oppressed and all that boring stuff.)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:20 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Illusion TV interviews Syd Mead, an artist that gave much of the "look" to films such as 2010: Odyssey Two, Blade Runner and more. With the ultimate fanboy edition of Blade Runner coming later this year and a documentary on his work in release, maybe we'll see a comprehensive print edition of his work soon?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:33 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Just like to point out that Baen Books is offering a whole pile of fine works of science fiction, fantasy and more in their Free Library. Just in case you think Amazon has invented the world of electronic books. (And while you're at it, surf past the media hype and also look at Project Gutenberg, Memoware, Manybooks and other folks who have been on the frontier far longer than the Amazon effort. Heck, I recall downloading Project Gutenberg works for my Apple Newton!)

(There's no reason, by the way, to spend several hundred dollars on a poorly designed, hard to hold comfortably, overpriced, DRM-crippled reader. Some smart shopping in second-hand outlets can get you a perfectly capable laptop, eBook reader or PDA for far less.) more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 11:27 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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...does anybody hear it?

Checking the news of late, you'd think the only labor action that has happened in the country is the current screenwriter's strike in Hollow-wood. They want a bigger slice of the pie, all well and good, but a lot of this amuses me. There is a fair bit of chest-beating over various shows. Will Heroes take a fall? Will we see Battlestar Galactica's final season? How about 24? Will The People, having been subjected to endless amounts of Reality Television desert their sets for other forms of entertainment?

I don't know about you, folks, but for me the train left that station a long time ago. Three years ago I averaged—maybe—four hours of television a week. Two years ago, it dropped. For the past year...about one hour of television. Period.

I'd rather read. I do watch shows, but more often than not, on a massively time-shifted sense of things (waiting for the DVD set for a season to come out and then watching when it suits me). I've spent more time online than in front of the television set (as you may have noticed from all the postings here!). Shows that I'm most interested in get shuffled, cancelled or just never come to pass.

And, did I mention that I'd rather read?

As television has become more and more fractured, either chasing smaller and smaller sub-sets of the audience or chasing diminishing returns on what was the latest hot trend...it has captured less and less of my interest. Seeing the ratings for shows before this strike, I can't be the only one. Are more people playing Halo than watching Heroes?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:42 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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