It’s been a while since I’ve updated this, so while I’m in a procrastinating mood, I figured now’s a good time to get to it. Here are the books and magazines I’ve read in the first nine weeks of 2008:
Category: REVIEWS
Movies Of Late…
As per comments that my reviews of things run long when I clump videos and movies along with TV and music, I’m going to only do movies and TV here. I’ve got another post on books in the works. These will be quick-capsule reviews, for the most part. Martian ChildSaw this in Seoul with Lime. She found it a little too “normal,” as in, the supporting characters were just a little too predictable for her tastes. I haven’t read the original story, though I have read other things by David Gerrold, but I found the movie entertaining in how it …
Watch the Skies
Watch the Skies is the name of the website where Tor invites you to join their e-newsletter mailing list… …and get free books. So, like, what are you waiting for? (Via Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist) UPDATE: Simon Owens emailed to let me know that much more is in store for us at Tor. More here.
Bananagirl Wins the Prize
Back in the days when I still played with Dabang Band, we used to joke about hiring telephone girls to dance for one of our shows. You know, the girls in vinyl skirts who get hired to dnace when new phone shops or hardware outlets open. (See here or here for examples. There’s girls with a dancing soju bottle here, too.) I never took the idea seriously, but seeing the video below, I now think Dabang should have permanently hired on a troupe of such young ladies, contracting them always to wear blonde wigs and zebra-print hot pants. (And a …
삼거리 극장 (The Ghost Theater, aka Midnight Ballad for Ghost Theater)?
UPDATE (17 Feb 2008): I have a copy on its way. Lime ordered it for me. Last time we checked, it wasn’t available anywhere, but now it is. Whee! Ever since I heard about this film, I’ve wanted to see it, but I’ve never seen it on any shelf, or advertised here, and it’s never available at Yesasia.com. And yeah, it does exist — there’s even a trailer here er, here: And yeah, in one way, it looks like another Fox Family, a film I hated in the theater (though it grew on me later), but even if the ghosts …
Religion, Sex, Aliens, and Gustative Weirdness
I just picked up issue 2 of GUD magazine, in PDF form, figuring that if the sample I got for signing up made a pretty smooth conversion to .prc (mobipocket) format, I can probably convert the whole PDF that way too. But I didn’t wait to check out The Salivary Reflex by my friend Tina Connolly, whom I met at Clarion West. Oddly, Tina said she didn’t think this story was all that disturbing shocking in response to someone’s comment that it was “written to disturb shock.” For me, however, it was quite unsettling. Probably not for the same reasons …
Stuff From This Week
UPDATE: This post has finally been reconstructed. Enjoy! UPDATE: Somewhere from a third to half of this post disappeared. I’ll rewrite that soon. But not today, as I’m (dramatic flourish) feeling ill! It’s been a busy lazy week. Since there’s nothing new in Gordland, I thought I’d just dump some links. I don’t do this often, but since I’ve just been catching up and surfing around (aside from a rewrite I’m working on) I have lots of stuff to share. I’ll subdivide it all by headings. One more thing: for the LJ readers out there, there are some Youtube videos …
The Horror of Arirang, and on Ao Nang
A few nights ago, when I started writing this, I was in my room in Vientiane, wondering whether I should go to the North-Korean restaurant Pyongyang for dinner. It was rather far off, and I’d already wandered around a fair bit that day, but curiosity, oh but it niggled. I didn’t end up going, though. Probably a good thing: after all the Korean practice I got in Luang Prabang — the town was FULL of Koreans — I would have slipped into the language without thinking and would later have been kidnapped from my room and shipped up to Pyongyang …
Going Soon to Thailand-Way…
Got my tickets booked up, and now I’m just trying to book places to stay in Bangkok and in Rai Leh. But to get myself in the Bangkok mood, I stopped by Somtow’s World, since he’s probably the most famous Thai I know of, aside from the King, of course. It’s odd I’ve never read any of his books — though I do have a copy of Spaceship & Haiku on my shelf at home — given the interests we have in common. He’s a composer, and I studied composition; he’s an author of spec-fic, and so am I. But …
Fantasy Readers — Go Vote!
Two of my friends and fellow grads of Clarion West 2006 — Maura McHugh and Caroline Yoachim — have stories on the poll for best stories published in 2007 by Fantasy Magazine. Are you a reader? Go vote!