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The Wife and I watched Avatar the other day. My reaction to the film is still pretty much what it was: I liked it as a well-made, beautiful-to-look-at SF adventure flick. Nothing earth-shattering from the story standpoint, but just an extremely well-crafted popcorn movie. And you know what? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, and in truth, I’m even kind of OK with the film’s Best Picture nomination, since William Goldman has long noted that adventure films and comedies are the hardest movies to get right, and yet, those are the kinds of films that get snubbed left and rightDown the rabbit hole….

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Lynn found this list, which differs substantially from the last one I did, so we’ll do the same deal this time: already read it; own it and plan to read it; don’t own but plan to read. With occasional comment. UPDATE: There’s apparently not 100 here. Oh well. Call it the “Almost a hundred”, then. The Forever War – Joe HaldemanI Am Legend – Richard MathesonCities in Flight – James BlishDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick (I still haven’t read any PKD!) The Stars My Destination – Alfred BesterBabel-17 – Samuel R. DelanyLord of Light –Down the rabbit hole….

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A while back I bought a copy of Kate Elliott’s novel Jaran on the assumption that it was, at least kinda-sorta, a space opera. It turns out to not really be a space opera at all; it’s more of a future planetary romance type of book. No matter; those are only matters of taxonomy and nomenclature. It’s not a space opera simply because very little of it takes place in space. So what is Jaran about, then? It turns out to be a science fictional romance story, as well as a tale of an epic journey, a clash-of-cultures novel, andDown the rabbit hole….

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Time for some notes on a bit of recent reading! :: As much as I love science fiction, I’m the first to admit that my reading history with it is full of holes, and that there are many, many authors who are pillars of the genre whom I have yet to read. I can scratch one off now, because I’ve finally read some Larry Niven. Specifically, the novel Ringworld. I really don’t know anything about Niven at all, except that he’s done lots of work with Jerry Pournelle, and that he’s mainly known for a series of books or storiesDown the rabbit hole….

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Time to catch up on some recent reading! :: Sports From Hell: My Search for the World’s Dumbest Competition by Rick Reilly is a fun piece of sportswriting in which Reilly travels the world in search of really bizarre sports. The ones he finds are both familiar (the “Rock Paper Scissors” championships) and utterly unexpected (World Sauna Championships). Some of these he tries, some he only watches from afar, but all in all, the book is a funny and fascinating look into the world of organized competition. Despite having built a society, we humans still revere competition and have aDown the rabbit hole….

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So, thirty years have passed since the release of Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Wow, I guess. As luck would have it, I watched the film not too long ago — a couple of months, probably — and it still holds up extremely well. This is unsurprising, of course; the film is a bona fide classic. I’ve read some tributes here and there around the Interweb and around Blogistan specifically, and I’ve found myself of mixed mind about the good words being said about the movie, mainly because a very large portion of comment seems to beDown the rabbit hole….

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The Daughter and I watched Independence Day last week. It’s the first time I’ve watched the entire movie in ages, and my impressions haven’t changed one bit. I’ve never been one for the idea of “guilty pleasures”, which I take to mean “Things you like even though you know you shouldn’t”; why should I ever think I shouldn’t like something that I already like? Makes no sense to me…but Independence Day (or, famously and quite oddly, ID4 for short) is about as close as I come to having a real guilty pleasure. I like the movie a lot, and yet,Down the rabbit hole….

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Again from SamuraiFrog. Let’s talk Star Trek! 1. What is your favorite Star Trek movie? (not including STXI)? Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. I love the character interactions, the Spock-as-Holmes stuff, the large-scale storyline, the tense space battle between the Enterprise and the Klingon Bird of Prey that can fire while cloaked, and I adore the sign-off signatures of the original cast members at the end. 2. What is your favorite scene in STXI? I prefer to think of this movie as Star Trek 2009, as opposed to Trek XI. Favorite scene? The whole opening, culminating in the birthDown the rabbit hole….

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SamuraiFrog points this out: a very well-made trailer for the movie TRON, the original 1982 classic, using only footage from the movie but edited in the style of trailers these days: Compare with the actual original trailer from 1982: Trailers have sure come a long way, haven’t they? Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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I see at AICN that a sequel or two to Independence Day may be in the works. Such a project has long been rumored; this has been on-again, off-again ever since the original movie came out in 1996 and did lots of business. I actually loved ID4 and I still think it’s just amazingly fun to watch (note to self: show ID4 to the kid), even though its plot doesn’t make one bit of sense, even before Jeff Goldblum defeats the aliens with his Macintosh Powerbook. Of course, that makes you wonder how the sequel would go: ALIENS: We’re back,Down the rabbit hole….