Jun 10 2007
Author: Alan Dean Foster
ISBN: 0450551857 DDC: 813.54
See also: LibraryThing
Something was wrong.
No one on the Sequencer had been able to tell him exactly what it might be, but he could sense it. Very unscientific, he reprimanded himself.
Mar 30 2007
Author: Sherri S Tepper
ISBN: 0006482694 DDC: 813.54
See also: LibraryThing ; Mia’s Booklist ; Infinity Plus review ; The Speculative Life
Grass!
Millions of square miles of it; numberless wind-whipped tsunamis of grass, a thousand sun-lulled caribbeans of grass, a hundred rippling oceans, every ripple a gleam of scarlet of amber, emerald or turquoise, multicolored as rainbows, the colors shivering over the prairies in stripes and blotches, the grass - some high, some low, some feathered, some straight - making their own geography as they grow.
May 02 2006
Dir & Writ: James Gunn
I’ll be honest, at first I only wanted to go see Slither in order to support Nathan Fillion. But the trailers made it look entertaining, and the reviews were pretty good, so in the end it wasn’t just [tag]Serenity[/tag] love that made me go.
Slither isn’t going to win any Oscars, it isn’t about any great themes. It is content to be a film about a gross alien invasion with plenty of humour thrown in. And cursing. Plenty of cursing.
Bill Pardy is police chief, or sheriff or something I don’t really know how the US police system works, in a small town. Where his partner checks the speed of birds and the like, disapointed if he is more than two miles out with his guess. Bill has a cruch on local teacher, Starla. But she is married to Grant Grant. The trouble starts when Grant goes out and gets himself infected by an alien parasitic monster thing, that takes over his body and soon attempts to take over the entire town and then the world in its desire for “meat”.
The plot isn’t really that important though. What is important is the blend of gore and humour, and Slither is a perfect example of this sort of film. You’ll be laughing through your disgust. And wondering how a film where every second word seems to be fuck managed to only get a 15A rating.
Nathan Fillion gets to show off how good he is at falling on his face. There are a few pretty girls for the fellas, but mostly this is about the ick-factor.
I think my favourite part was after the slug things attack the police posse and more than a few officers end up unconscious, but alive, and one of the unaffected officers says “Praise be Jesus!” This prompts Mayor Jack MacReady to rant about how far these slugs are from being a reason to praise Jesus. “This shit is about as far from God as shit can get!”
IMDb | Official Site | Grant Grant’s blog | Cinematical
Tags: 7 Stars, aliens, comedy, Elizabeth Banks, gore, Gregg Henry, gross comedy, horror, horror-com, James Gunn, Michael Rooker, Nathan Fillion, R15A, SlitherDec 10 2005
I wasn’t hoping for great things, and all my hopes were met. Not good at all. The basic plot is that some sort of problem sends a group of marines up to Mars to enforce a quarantine and find out what is going on up there.
Turns out there are monster running around.
Tags: 3 Stars, Al Weaver, aliens, Ben Daniels, Deobia Oparei, Doom, Dwight Johnson, Karl Urban, monster, plotless, Razaaq Adoti, Richard Brake, Rosamund Pike, sff, sillyJul 05 2005
Dir: Stephen Spielberg
Writ: ]H.G. Wells, Josh Friedman, David Koepp
You know the way you go to see a film that you’ve heard is crap, you have these really low expectations so the film turns out to be quite good. Well, not in this case. I thought it was going to be crap, and was I ever right?
The start isn’t too bad. We see Tom “Brain Lesion” Cruise as a fairly crap parent. He’s not a bad Dad, he just isn’t good. He’s also an asshole, so you are sitting there waiting for him to “grow and learn” through the destruction of life as we know it.
The effects are great, the lightning, the tripods, the whole film looks really good. And Dakota Fanning is utterly believable as a slightly precocious child. And she reacts pretty much like you’d expect a child to react, crying out for her “Mommy”.
Plus the initial fears that it is the “terrorists” who have attacked. All great touches.
Still didn’t like the film though.
The audience never has to worry about any of the characters dying. Yes there is destruction, death and violence left right and centre, but those are all mere background figures. People we never knew and don’t care about. By focusing so much on Cruise and his kids I think the audience knows that nothing really bad is going to happen to any of them.
And so despite all the aliens, the blood, the violence, there isn’t really any tension.
I could go on listing things that made me go “hmmmm” (in a bad way). Like the now useless cars all stopped on the streets, yet handily pulled in a little so that Cruise could drive by. Like being able to use a mirror to hide from the aliens. And you know that scene in the basket? Why didn’t all the other folks help the fella who got sucked up before Cruise? Why the sudden desire to help?
Lame.
Tags: 3 Stars, aliens, based on book, crap, Dakota Fanning, David Koepp, H.G. Wells, Josh Friedman, Justin Chatwin, looks pretty, sff, special effects, Stephen Spielberg, Tim Robbins, Tom Cruise, War, War of the Worlds