Review Day

There are no spoilers in these reviews.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog:
This succinct musical by Joss Whedon (about the length of an episode of 24) was originally posted as a series of short web episodes, and tells the tale of Dr. Horrible's attempts to join the Evil League of Evil. It sometimes teeters on the line dividing funny from lame, but it's short and mostly clever. You can't go wrong with a Neil Patrick Harris vehicle, and it's also fun to watch Nathan Fillion (of Firefly) as Captain Hammer.

Final Grade: B-

Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks by Ethan Gilsdorf:
This book, written by a former D&D addict turned 40, explores various roleplaying outlets (from table-top games to Live Action to World of Warcraft) in search of the answers to why people play games. There are no revelations in here, and the author's attempts to tie his research directly to his own life work surprisingly less often than expected, but it's a reasonably interesting read. Having not done anything in this book other than play computer games, I might not be the target audience, but it feels like anyone outisde of this world could read the book and understand the jargon.

Final Grade: B-

Up:
All I knew going into this movie was what was shown in the trailers: an old man floats away in a balloon-driven house with a kid stowing away on his front porch. I was pleasantly surprised with the rest of the movie, although the "dog collar" idea is almost one step too far, even for a world where a house can fly. I actually ended up liking this movie MORE than Wall-E.

Final Grade: A

Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Maarten Troost:
When I run out of other books, I end up reading a lot of Rebecca's, whose tastes range more towards humourous memoirs and travelogues rather than the latest post-humous Michael Crichton novel (which I picked up at Costco last week and am slightly scared to begin, because what does Crichton know about pirates, and why would he leave a completed manuscript in his desk unless it sucked?). This book tells the tale of a typical D.C. couple who decides to relocate to the tiny island of Tarawa in the South Pacific for a few years. The book is overly wordy, much like any one of my News updates, but once you get into the rhythm of the prose, this is an enjoyable and fun read. I, myself, would never pick up and move to a place where I have to scrape decomposed geckos out of my water tank while swimming in poop-mottled oceans, but that doesn't mean it's not a worthwhile story.

Final Grade: A-