Reilly Grant

This Friday I discovered an unexpected package from Netflix in my mailbox, their new Instant Streaming Disc for the PS3.  The lack of Netflix support was actually the only thing I regretted about choosing the PS3 over the Xbox 360.  No more!  Using the Instant Streaming Disc you can watch any of Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” titles on your television.  Unfortunately the selection of such titles is a little sparse.  It consists of an eclectic combination of hit new releases, TV shows and B movies from the 80’s.  Nevertheless this has definitely brought even more value to the Netflix service.  (Hear that cable company?  I don’t need you for my entertainment!)

Last Tuesday Fox premiered a new series, Glee.  Set in an Ohio high school where the jocks and the cheerleaders rule the school, Glee tells the story of a Spanish teacher who dreams of restoring the school’s glee club to the glory it had when he was a student.  At the outset this sounds like it could make for some pretty good television.  I’ve always been a fan of the musical comedy and despite the work of Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, Dollhouse) popular series in this genre have always been hard to find.  Unfortunately for Glee, this series might not be one I’ll continue watching. (continue reading…)

ABC’s drama department is a strange place to be finding this season’s new Sci-Fi show,  but since the Sci-Fi channel’s decided to rename itself “SyFy” anything’s possible.  I haven’t quite gotten through the first episode, but it seems alright so far, like an updated Apollo 13.  Perhaps it may even get the public thinking about space exploration again. (continue reading…)

Pixar manages to blend outstanding animation technology with some of the best story tellers in the movie business.  The first thing you see when watching a Pixar movie is the animation.  Toy Story was groundbreaking in it’s use of computer animation, but Pixar has moved beyond that.  Sure, Ratatouille debuted incredible new fur rendering techniques, and there are shots in WALL-E that are indistinguishable from a photograph, but that is not where the magic in these films lies.  No, Pixar films feature stories that are new, and different, and they use all that fabulous technology to bring them to life.  WALL-E is a tearful romance, with no dialog or human characters for the first 45 minutes!  Ratatouille takes the rat, scourge of the kitchen, and turns him into the greatest chef in all of France.  That leaves, of course, the latest Pixar feature, released a few weeks ago in theaters (and, if you haven’t seen it, hopefully still is playing), Up.  Perhaps the most amazing part of the entire film is the first 10 minutes. (continue reading…)

Science fiction is wonderful.  It gives the author the power to create a world exactly as they’d like it and it gives the reader all the worlds in the universe to dream about.  At the same time, science fiction is about us, in our world.  Every story is a possibility, a glimpse into the future, or a new perspective on our past.  Where did we come from, where are we going.  Ender in Exile, the latest manuscript by award winning author Orson Scott Card fills the gap between the first instalment of the now famous Ender series, Ender’s Game and the sequel Speaker for the Dead.  As a midquel, Ender in Exile has a lot of ground to cover.  Before reading it I expected to hear about Ender’s transformation from the boy who won the Formic War to the Speaker for the Dead.  In the beginning of Speaker for the Dead we are quickly introduced to a lot of the changes that have occurred during the intervening centuries.  With this book I hoped Card would go back and fill in some of the juicy details.  I was not disappointed. (continue reading…)

I missed this show when it first came out, thanks to Rafi for pointing it out to me later.  Chuck combines a good techy comedy (ala Dilbert) with the thrill of the spy show and a good mix of romance and drama as well.  The main character, Chuck Bartowski finds himself implanted with all of the U.S.’s most top secret intelligence through some sort of subliminal encoding computer known as the “Intersect.”  As far as I can tell the idea is that this system was designed to “intersect” information collected by the different U.S. spy agencies.  He is guarded by agents Sarah Walker and John Casey of the CIA and NSA.  Those familiar with Joss Wendon’s Firefly will appreciate the return of Adam Baldwin, as his familiar trigger happy character.  Quantum Leap fans will also appreciate the surprise appearance of Scott Bakula late in the series, no spoilers though. (continue reading…)

I was hanging out on IRC and someone posted a link to this comic from Sequential Art.  So far I seem to be doing well in the finding good web comics department.  Sequential Art is the story of Art, a graphic designer for an advertising firm, and his two room mates; Kat Vance a catgirl and photographer, Pip McGraw a penguin and comic book guy and Scarlet, a squirrel girl with a manic personality, but who seems to possess a detailed knowledge of science and technology; when she is not distracted by shiny things.  I’m only on comic 200, at some point there are 4 squirrel girls.  Either Scarlet finds some friends or gets put into a cloning machine, either would be par for the course with this webcomic.

Similar to MegaTokyo and Ctrl-Alt-Del this is a comic set in a gamer’s world.  (Which explains the cat and bunny girls.)  Along with dealing with the normal slice of life adventures one encounters when living with a catgirl, a perverted penguin and a lunatic squirrel girl, there seems to be a developing plot involving a small black evil thing dropped off by a random nerd in the first couple dozen strips.

That’s all for now, I have more to read.  Stay tuned for a review of D.C. Simpson’s new comic / graphic novel Raine Dog.

I was never a huge fan of the original Star Trek series or the movies; except for Leonerd Nimoy.  TNG and Voyager were my favorites.  When this movie came out I was afraid of two things which have plagued science fiction and Star Trek movies in the past.  First, that it would be just another action movie.  The trailers definitely played up the movie’s fast paced action sequences.  This is a problem that a lot of science fiction movies have.  Science fiction is not about action, it is about people and the future.  Second, that it would turn out like Insurrection and Nemesis; with a weak plot and irrelevant story line.  The only good TNG movie was First Contact because they actually had some good source material to build a plot out of.  The others didn’t have enough relation with the series to fit in at all.

Edit: Orson Scott Card (author of the Ender’s Game series and other wonderful sci-fi books) has posted a review of this movie as well as the new X-Men film, X-Men Origins: Wolverine on Uncle Orson Reviews Everything. I generally agree with everything he says and, being a professional writer, he says it better than I do.  Thanks to Rafi for pointing out his column to me. (continue reading…)

If you find blood and guts disturbing, then Dexter is not for you.  If you are willing, however, to look beyond that the show offers an interest reexamination of the meaning of “hero.”  After all, the main character is a serial killer.  He cuts people up, because he likes to, or maybe he has to.  Now, he only cuts up bad guys, but does that make him good, or just less evil?  This show manages to make the everyday creepy (the opening credits are very David Lynch) and the creepy seem perfectly normal.

I was expecting the series to be more episodic, a one murder per episode sort of thing, sortof like like Monk, but well, different.  Instead the series immediately jumps into an overarching plot that drives it through it’s first season.  There’s still time for catching the occasional bad guy and doing the whole Seran wrap thing.  An overarching plot gives much more opportunity for cliffhangers.  I’m only one episode into the second season and it’s already shown that’s going to be a roller coaster ride of suspense. (continue reading…)

When this came out in theatres I was sceptical. It seemed like another Spy Kids-esque teen superhero movie. How wrong I was. Bolt is Disney at it’s best. A heart-warming story and the excellent animation we’ve come to expect only out of Pixar films. Of course, since Disney owns Pixar now it isn’t too surprising we’re seeing this kind of thing out of Disney Animation Studios. Bolt found me laughing at every joke and brought a tear to my eye with it’s sweet innocence. Getting the movie to play, on the other hand, was not so enjoyable. Disney seems to have improved their anti-piracy measures quite a lot in it’s recent DVD releases.

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