25 January, 2013
If you’re an 11 year old boy, this is the girl you want to meet – Chloe Grace Moretz in Hugo.
My Top 20:
1 January, 2013
A couple of star-making performances in the best film of the year.
My Top 20:
24 April, 2012
I’m a Lord of the Rings fanatic with a thing for Cate Blanchett. What were you expecting to see here?
My Top 20:
8 July, 2011
The British Deluxe (first 5), the U.S. Hardcover (all 7), the Time Magazine that announced the craze in September of 1999 and my favorite cover - the British adult Deathly Hallows
“You should read these,” the good looking manager at work said. I had just started working at Barnes and Noble – my first bookstore job – and it was the third week of September in 1999. She was pointing at the three Harry Potter books, which were the top sellers in the store. The title character was about to make the cover of Time Magazine as the sales of the third book were sparking a craze.
Since I could check out hardcovers for free, I took the first one home. The next day, having read the whole thing, I brought it back. When she asked about it, my initial reaction was that they weren’t as good as the Narnia books. For all the fun ways it which it combined a boarding school novel with classic fantasy, I felt the book lacked depth in its characters – they were all too clearly black or white, with the only possible exception being Professor Snape, but he was so demonized by the main characters that it was hard to tell how much gray he had. So when she asked, I said “There’s no character in the book as good as Edmund in the Narnia books.”
She encouraged me to keep reading them. That was easy enough and the first one was enjoyable enough, so that night I brought home the second book. The next day, that came back and I brought home the third one. The second one had been about equal to the first, but the third one was a big step up. The characters had definitely begun to develop various shades of gray and the back story of the characters was beginning to fill in. So, there I was, now anxiously awaiting the fourth one, right at the head of the wave that was beginning to build.
Oh, and the good looking manager who insisted that I read them, told me how wonderful they were and defended their quality against the Narnia books? We got married in between books four and five and had Thomas before book six.
24 May, 2009
Alfonso Cuaron
Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint in the best of the Harry Potter films - Cuaron's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
Films (in rank order):
Top 10 Best Director Finishes (Nighthawk Awards):
27 October, 2008
My Lord of the Rings collection back in 2004. It's somewhat larger now.
I own 24 copies of the book (it’s not a trilogy, it’s one book that the publishers decided to split into three). I read it every year. My wedding ring is inscribed in Elvish. Is there any question what’s going to come in first?
But of course, the question becomes, what are the other 9? Part of that answer depends on knowing what qualifies for the answer. Field of Dreams and It’s a Wonderful Life do not, in spite of the AFI ballots. Besides, how does Field of Dreams end up on their fantasy list but not their Sports list? Also not on my list are Wizard of Oz and Mary Poppins because they already went on the Kids list. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair if Wizard of Oz was at the top of every list.
Anyway, the other films that AFI considers a Fantasy that would make my list if I considered them Fantasy are Purple Rose of Cairo, Being John Malkovich, Who Framed Roger Rabbit (all Comedies), Brazil (Sci-Fi) and King Kong (Horror). And I classify pretty much every Comic Book movie under Action.
When I make a list of Fantasy films, I include films in which the primary world is Fantasy, in which things happen that don’t happen in reality, but not in a futuristic or science based setting. So no Science Fiction films on this list. However, for those of you who like Sci-Fi, check back next week for my review of the book Multireal by David Louis Edelman. It’s worth reading.
20 July, 2008
Brilliant!
A quick note: the following 10 novels will not appear on
Drivel!
this list. It’s not your list. You might think these are great. I think they are overrated, whether because they are simply badly written (The Historian, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter), pretentious McSweeney’s-esque prattle (Absurdistan, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Everything is Illuminated), boring (Life of Pi), overrated due to serious subject matter (Lovely Bones), well written but uninteresting (Bee Season, Wickett’s Remedy), or fatally flawed due to oversimplification of a truly horrid situation (The Kite Runner). They’re not here so don’t ask for them. Also not here are the Thursday Next books by Jasper Fforde, which are fantastic, but, like Douglas Adams, not quite great writing, or the Jump 225 Trilogy, which I love and was written by a friend of mine, but isn’t quite up there and isn’t done yet. I have done away with the English language requirement for this list, because my previous list was done to Modern Library standards to match up against their list. Only two of these are foreign language novels anyway. Here’s my list:
Before I get to the list, I feel I should point out that it’s now up to 29 books. That’s because I have added some updates over the last couple of years and didn’t feel the need to delete the books at the bottom of the list.
