Genre Character of the Week: Toby (Kung Fu Rider)

Having just finished Batman: Arkham Asylum for the PS3, I’ve now moved on to a new game called Kung Fu Rider for the Playstation Move.  In it you take the role of either our genre character of the week - a private investigator named Toby, or his assistant Karin, who are attempting to escape from the mob (or to be more technically correct, the triad) through the street of Hong Kong while riding office chairs.

You know what?  That’s actually pretty much it – take a look at the attached photo and read the above paragraph and you know everything about Toby I do – the only time he even speaks in the game (past saying “I hope Karin’s all right” at the beginning of each level) is in the opening menu where he asks his assistant exactly why the mob is after them.

Reviews of the game are either pretty bad (game control seems to be a big issue) or good but with the caveat that the game is quite short. My only complaint is that I feel a little uncomfortable playing the female character as she seems pretty overtly sexual for a family game (living in a house of women I tend to notice these things).

For my money (which I didn’t actually spend – I got the game as a trade during my last used-book store run) the game is a lot of fun and the short levels mean it would do well as a game to share with company as well. 

Game Review: Batman Arkham Asylum

Since Father's Day my weekend PS3 game of choice has been Batman: Arkham Asylum and I've got to say it's been a lot of fun.  Unlike previous playstation games I've played, this time my 15-year-old daughter was playing the game as well, and she finished the game one day after I did, which was nice because some times I was a little ahead of her and could help her out and sometimes she was a little ahead of me.

The game follows (pretty closely actually) the Grant Morrison graphic Novel Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth which has the honour of being the first Graphic novel I ever purchased and for introducing me to Morrison and artist Dave McKean.

The game works in a sandbox style (meaning you can either follow the main story or any number of side stories) and focuses on the inmates of the asylum taking over and Batman having to put things back in order.

Honestly this game was tonnes of fun - for the voices they used a number of the same actors from the '90s animated series and the whole look of the game was pretty amazing.

I know I'm pretty far behind the curve with this one (Batman: Arkham City is the current game of the day), but if you haven't tried this one yet it's a lot of fun.

Things I've Noticed: Solving a Rubick's Cube impresses

Okay, I'll admit it, I'm one of those guys who can solve a Rubik's Cube in five minutes or less.

And what does this mean, you ask?

Mostly it means that I work my hardest to come up with clever excuses to try solving a cube in front of new people so that they can think I'm a cool dude.

My favourite ways include (but are not limited to): messing up a cube, dropping it on the ground and saying "Hey Look, a Rubik's Cube - I wonder if I can solve this crazy thing?" or sometimes I'll pull out the cube and just start messing around with it mid conversation and then solve it while chatting, and every once in a while I'll simply hand a person a completed cube and ask:

"Could you mess this up for me?  I've got to get my cube on!"

Actually that last one probably doesn't make me sound that cool, but let me tell you, when I get to solving a cube, people are impressed...

Or maybe they're just humouring me....



Oh Yeah!  well my wife says I'm cool!

Genre Character of the Week: Oliver Yates

Last weekend I finally got around to seeing the 1982 movie Cat People (a remake of the 1942 original), which my wife has been shocked that I, a guy who loves monster movies, had never gotten around to seeing.  Interestingly for me, although the movie definitely focuses on the were-cat creatures (whoops - sorry for the mild 30-year-old spoiler) played by Malcolm McDowell and Nastassja Kinski (who were both great in the film, btw), the character of Oliver Yates, played by (John Heard), was the stand out, and this weeks genre character.

Oliver is a zoo curator - basically the guy behind the purchasing, selling and handling of the animals in the New Orleans zoo, when he meets a strange girl named Irena.  What starts as a strange romance actually ends up as a terrifying, all-consuming relationship for him.  What I like about Oliver (and this definitely comes down to the actor) is how well the audience can see how quickly he is drawn into the world of this strange, mystifying girl.

The movie is pretty graphic, both in terms of violence and sex, and although it doesn't have the classic status of the 1942 original, it may be (although it was twenty years too early for the trend) and remaining of the original, wherein we look at the story from a different point of view and maybe understand the monsters a little more.

Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises

Yesterday I took a break from my busy weekend schedule and saw the new film The Dark Knight Rises.


Quick review: Awesome - I'll be adding this to my DVD collection

Not-quite-so-quick review: The third film in the Batman franchise does something very nice - it ends the story.  Following The Dark Night (currently tied with Unbreakable and The Incredibles as one of my favourite three superhero movies) The Dark Knight Rises would actually be well served if you re-watch both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight before you see it.

The move has massive explosions, awesome gadgets and surprisingly (to me at least) an awful lot of character development from all of the leads.

Honestly the movie was great - go see it, that's about all I can say!

Things I've Noticed: I'm Switching Jobs

Although I don’t tend to get into specifics here, I am leaving my current employment of two years this week and starting in a new position on Monday – it’s back in the library field, closer to my house and has one of the most spectacular views I’ve ever seen from a library.

Leaving is a little scary – I’ve really enjoyed my work and the team I work with specifically have been great – supportive, friendly and really fun to be around.

All I’m saying is that the next team is going to have a tough act to follow.

Genre Character of the Week: Kiera Cameron

Early every morning over a cup of coffee and (when I’m being good) breakfast, my family sits together and watches about an hour of television.  Usually it’s shows on DVD, but upon occasion it is the new stuff as well.  Over the years we’ve seen everything from sitcoms to dramas and at the rate of five hours a week, we tend to make it through most series in every couple weeks (or a month for longer ones).

Right now we’re watching the Canadian science fiction series Continuum.  The show follows a cop from 2077 who has been transported back to 2012 along with 8 terrorists and her attempts to stop them from altering the future.  The police officer in question (called a protector in her own era) is our genre character of the week, Kiera Cameron (pictured left).

In the series, 2077 is a corporate-controlled world where governments have fallen (BTW, I should really do a review of Jennifer Government soon – a great SF novel suggested to me a few years back by my BFF Mike) and the status quo is threatened by a terrorist cell called Liber8, who have recently bombed a number of significant buildings in Vancouver Canada with a death toll number in the thousands.

After their arrest and trial, the eight ringleaders of the group are sentenced to die, and during the execution they use a device to escape through time – and because she saw the device and attempted to wrestle it away, Kiera is pulled back with them.

The majority of the show takes part in modern-day Vancouver, Canada.  Kiera (played by Rachel Nichols – who was a green-skinned Orion cadet in the 2009 Star Trek film, which is probably why Mike is watching the show) is a mother who, in addition to trying to stop these terrorists, is also hoping to get back to her nine-year-old son Sam.  In a lot of ways this show parallels the 2008 BBC series Ashes to Ashes which also features a cop trapped in the past attempting to return to her child in her present.

So far we’re only a couple episodes in, but the family is enjoying it, and a big part of that comes down to the main character.

Movie Review: Undead or Alive - A Zombedy

As I've mentioned previously, I got a Zombie-themed calendar for Christmas last year and although there are a lot of simple quotes like

January 12 - BRAINS!!!

or

June 23 - OMG! It's a Zombie!

most of the entries are references to zombie books, games and movies, and I'm enjoying checking them out.

A great example - the 2007 Zombie/Western/Comedy mashup, Undead or Alive: A Zombedy, starring Chris Kattan and James Denton.  I got the movie during one of my previous used-bookstore runs and as I've got another coming up, I thought I should check it out in case it isn't worth owning.

Guess what?  This is actually a really fun movie, with much better writing and direction than I expected.  The two leads are great together, with Chris Kattan playing a Don Knotts-style western hero and James Denton playing the classic smooth-talking coutlaw.  The two men partner up (sort of) and end up fighting hoards of zombies.

I don't want to give much up plot-wise, but if you can get a hold of the film it's worth the watch, but even though there is a lot of comedy, it is a zombie film, so be prepared for some graphic violence.

This one I'm keeping.

Things I've Noticed: My Oldest Child is no longer a teen

So I spent the day with my oldest daughter today, as tomorrow she turns twenty.  This was basically my last chance to hang out with her as a teen so we hit the mall, had some coffee and spent the day shopping.

It was awesome.

It's kind of funny, as tomorrow I will both have a twenty-year-old daughter and will be old enough to have a twenty-year-old daughter.

Which is both scary and pretty awesome.

Happy 20th Birthday (tomorrow) Lori,

Your daddykins (Bookmonkey).

Genre Character of the Week: Colin Templer

This month marks the fourth trip I’m taking into the Oxford History department in the Connie Willis stories (and novels) Firewatch (1985), Doomsday Book (1992), To Say Nothing of the Dog (1997) and Blackout/All Clear (2010), and as I’m coming to the end of these books (unless she writes another – HINT! HINT!) I thought it would be a good time for me to talk about my favourite character of the series, Colin Templer.


Only appearing in two of the stories (Doomsday Book and Blackout/All Clear), Colin is a 13 (and later) 17-year-old boy who gets to be involved in the history research at Oxford University in 2056 – 2060AD, which happens to involve time travel.  It’s kind of funny because if Colin were a more important character in the series, he may have come across as a “Mary Sue” – being a kid character who can do everything that all the adult characters can do and more besides.  But the best thing about this young man is that he is simply a teen who happens to be close enough to the university to be involved a bit.


That’s it – Colin comes across as an interesting young man who is (obviously) entranced by the possibility of time travel and wants to get involved.  For me, he represents my favourite thing about all of these stories, which is the well developed and fleshed-out characters who represent the everyman (and woman) put into extraordinary circumstances and trying to come through as best they can.


If you haven’t tried the series yet, it is well worth your while (I’m currently reading Blackout the first of the Blackout/All Clear diptych (a two-volume work made up of matching parts – can also refer to artwork), so don’t send me spoilers, but so far these are really great time travel stories.

Book Review: The Wind Through the Keyhole

Long-time readers of my blog will know I've got a soft spot for Stephen King, and specifically for this Dark Tower series, which happens to be one of my favourite fantasy series of all time (actually I suppose it might be my favourite Fantasy/Horror/Science Fiction series of all time, but I reserve the right to change that as I go along).  So when the book The Wind Through the Keyhole came out a few months back, I was cautious, but excited.


Cautious because the book is one of those "in-between" novels, which would fit between books four and five of the main series, and those are always a bit of a harder sell for me - I mean, I already know how everything worked out, why exactly do I care about an event that happened between the books I read five and six books back (the series overlaps with almost eighteen other books by the author, so to read the entire story you are looking at about a 22-book commitment).


Excited because these are some of my favourite characters in genre fiction and I was really excited to revisit them.


So in a nutshell - the book is great - it tells a story within a story within a story, and then brings you out again, sort of like Cloud Atlas, but with much more Dark Tower-y goodness.


The story is packed with action, thrills and enough robotics that I think my BFF Mike would like it (I got him to read the whole Dark Tower series, tie-ins and all a few years back and he liked that too!), and if you are a fan you should totally check it out.


If you haven't read any Dark Tower stories yet, go back to The Gunslinger.  It's totally worth your time and leads to an amazing series.

Things I've Noticed: In praise of Scribbling

Next week I start the next course towards my Masters of Library and Information Studies, The History of the Book, and in preparation for the course Ive been reading a number of titles which relate to the topic, and one of them, David Pearson's Books as History: The Importance of books beyond their text may have totally changed how I think about books.

Although I grew up trying my best to ensure the pristine condition of my various books, staying away from highlighting, dog-earing, underlining or (god forbid) making notes in the margins, it is exactly those scribbles and scratchings which prove most useful to the future.

You see, from a historians point of view, everything from book plates (the small piece of paper stuck at the beginning of the book declaring "This Book Belongs to _____" to notes will allow future historians to put the book in an historical context, letting people know both who owned any particular book and also what they thought about it.

Strange to think, but all that stuff I avoid doing to my books over the years may have actually helped paint a better picture of the person I was.

Genre Character of the Week: Roy, the best friend

Following the advice of a classmate, I spent the weekend watching my local libraries copy of the Norwegian film Dead Snow, in which a group of vacationing med students are set upon by nazi zombies.

 

Super Quick Review: Gory, Actiony Fun!

 

I chose Roy (not to be confused with previous GCotW Ray) as my character of the week not because he’s the most sympathetic (Martin), or the most movie-savvy (Erlend), but because he’s got my favourite line of dialogue in the movie and I can quote it as the only spoiler it gives is given away in both the trailer and the poster:

 

Roy: (Talking on his cell-phone) Hello,  9-1-1-?  We’ve been attacked by what look like German zombies from the Second World War.  And we set our cabin on fire by accident!

(Jerks phone away from ear)

Roy: The B**** hung up on me!

 

If you haven’t seen the movie before it’s totally worth it – it clearly owes a lot to both the Evil Dead movies and Shaun of the Dead, both in humour and in extreme levels of gore, but I found it a lot of fun.

Series Review: A Dream of Eagles

Happy Canada Day everyone!

Today I thought I'd take a quick look at one of my favourite Canadian authors, Jack Whyte, and his most famous series, A Dream of Eagles.


To be fair, Mr. Whyte was born in Scotland, but has been living in Canada since the '60s so I think it's fair to say as a nation we've adopted him.

The series takes a look at Arthurian legend (stories of King Arthur and his round table) and focuses on it through the lens of historical fiction, attempting to view the story behind the legend, the original story of the king, the wizard the sword in the stone and Camelot and tries to put together a framework which could one day become the legend with which we are all so familiar today.

The series is great - the novels are quite big but move quickly and are filled with action, adventure and romance (which does get a bit steamy at times).  The concepts of how all these pieces might have come together to form the backbone of the legend are incredibly clever and I can honestly say that these may be my favourite books on the topic - and over the years I've read everything from La Mort D'Artur to The Mists of Avalon.


If you haven't checked these books out before they are a great treat and I really hope you enjoy them.