Moderate Fantasy Violence #2 - Better Call Bob Messiah

Hello!

The second episode of Moderate Fantasy Violence, my new geek-stuff podcast with Alastair JR Ball, is upon you. I did kinda mean to do an actual blog post in the intervening fortnight so this blog doesn't just end up being a long string of podcasts, but there you go. You can hear the podcast in the embedded player below, or subscribe on iTunes or just right click here and download the MP3 file.

And what's in it? Well:

In a not-that-difficult second episode, Nick and Alastair look at the return of Better Call Saul (plus Gotham's prequel problems and the terrible omen of Bryan Cranston), the upcoming DC Comics Rebirth (plus how superhero comics are morphing into Doctor Who and the recent Iron Fist casting controversy) and the possibility of more adult-rated superhero movies after the success of Deadpool (plus eternal hope for sexy Gambit and Wolverine's stabby vendetta against walls and robots).

And then it's our still-nameless recommendations feature! Nick reports back on quietly squelchy crime series Messiah II, then recommends Alastair his first comic book in years. What will it be?

Oh, and if you enjoy it, I'm posting a few of the tangential discussions cut for time to the show's Soundcloud page under the name Excessive Fantasy Violence. The ones from #2 will start going up next week.

Veronica Mars seasons 1 & 2 - Belated TV review time!

Veronica Mars is a US TV high school crime show from the mid-2000s, in which a teenage girl in the crime-ridden town of Neptune solves a load of mysteries - both smaller ones to help out her classmates and big-time criminal incidents involving gangs, murders and the like. Helpfully, she's the daughter of a local private investigator, so she knows the business. I've long been aware that this is a very well-regarded show, and as a fan of Buffy, I'd probably like it, but only just got round to watching properly.

I've now seen the first two seasons - the third will follow, along with the recent Kickstartered film continuation, but considering this are mammoth 22-episode American network TV seasons, I figured I can probably find enough to say about the first 44 eps to fill up a blog post.

So, let's investigate this detective.

BEST OF 2014 - Top Ten TV

I used to be an Internet TV Reviewer, you know. Writing blog-length reviews of TV show episodes, expressing my critical thoughts, trying to be funny without tipping into bitchy snark. I eventually burnt out on sheer volume of critiquing, not to mention it wasn't justifying the time spent neglecting fiction, but still, I never reviewed purely for attention. I did it because I love the work.

So, I haven't reviewed a TV series weekly since Game of Thrones season 4 finished in April, but I have run down my top ten TV shows every year since 2012 on The Digital Fix and here in 2013, so I see no reason to stop now. Let's see this year's list, which includes The First Ever Non-Fictional Shows To Chart.

BEST OF 2014 - Books

My original plan, as threatened in last week's podcast/film/music summary, was to dig into my favourite books and comics of the year in this single post. However, due to circumstances beyond my control (me banging on for too long), I am going to leave this one with just the books and return to the comics at a later date. Probably quite a soon later date, as I still harbour the ambition of getting these blog posts out before 2014 itself ends, and I still gotta do the TV as well.

If you want to see how my tastes have evolved, you can consult the 2013 equivalent of this blog post. For now, though, let's dig into the best printed prose stories of the year, most of which I read digitally.

Doctor Who review on Dork Adore!

Review of last night's Doctor Who episode - "Flatline" - up now on Dork Adore! One-off, filling in, substitute reviewer type action.

For those who miss the days when I reviewed loads of TV, enjoy. Dork Adore needed a hand, I had the time, so why not? Obviously had to resist dumping all my opinions about the entire eighth series into that one review. Think I mostly managed it.

The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling) - Thoughts On A Book

Just finished reading The Cuckoo's Calling, the first crime effort by J.K. Rowling, best known for being written under the pen name of Robert Galbraith and concealed for a short period. Eventually, of course, the truth emerged, and although the fun ended, sales went through the roof.

But plenty already written about that, and sequel The Silkworm was released recently with the unsecret identity still in place. I read The Cuckoo's Calling as if it were a story (and in many ways, it is), how did it hold up? What thoughts did I have? (Some mild spoilers, though nothing explicit really.)

Best of 2013 - Books and Comics Edition

I'm off home for Christmas tomorrow, I should be packing a bag, so it seemed an ideal time to type up the second installment of my 2013 cultural intake summary! This time: Books and Comics!

If you want to see my movies, music and podcasts of choice, that was last week. TV to follow next, once I've formed an opinion on the Doctor Who Christmas special.

But first, it's time for stories told in page format. From a wide perspective, the big development this year was my moving entirely digital in both these areas. I can comfortably read digital comics on my widescreen monitor (though if anyone wants to buy me a tablet for Christmas, don't let me stop you), and started properly using my Kindle all the time. It's great, my room is much less drowning in paper. But what was I reading, exactly?

Best of 2013 - Movies, Music and Podcasts Edition

As half-predicted in last week's WriteBlog, my fiction-writing has slowed to a standstill thanks to festive distractions and an inconvenient cold. I'm just about keeping up with Hobson & Choi commitments, but aside from those, all quiet.

So, both to keep this blog ticking over and because I genuinely love reviewing stuff, I'm going to do a few posts about stories, shows and stuff I enjoyed during 2013. These are in no particular order and may involve items released pre-2013 that I've only just got round to dealing with, though I'll try to keep those to a minimum.

This time out: movies, music and podcasts. Subsequent posts will cover books, comics and TV.

Comic reviews: The Wake! X-Men! Many A True Nerd!

Two comic reviews on Many A True Nerd today...

First up, a joyous swing into the mainstream with Marvel's X-Men #1.

And, slightly off to one side:

New underwater horror series The Wake #1 from DC/Vertigo.

The Age Atomic by Adam Christopher – Book Review

If you enjoy novels that mash up their genres, smooshing a range of aesthetics together into a weird whole, then Adam Christopher’s The Age Atomic could be for you. At last count, it combines parallel universes, steampunk airships, superheroes, 50s nuclear paranoia and a noirish private dick together into one bizarre soup.

So, to really strain this metaphor to pieces, how tasty is that soup? Is it the same sickly green as the book cover?

Ex Machina by Brian K. Vaughan/Tony Harris – Review

Ex Machina is a comic book about a superhero. Well, a past-tense superhero – comic fan and civil engineer Mitchell Hundred gained the power to control machines, and embarked on a brief superhero career as The Great Machine, before jacking it in and running for Mayor of New York, believing he could do more good that way.

The series itself, by Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris, starts off with Hundred sitting alone in the dark offering to tell the story of his four years in office, with one warning: “It may look like a comic book, but it’s really a tragedy.”

Well, he wasn’t lying.

How To Review Stuff

As a brief scan of this blog will reveal, I write a lot of reviews. It has now reached the stage where I can formulate a review of a TV show (or other things, but often TV) in a very short space of time. So, since it's something I have been asked for advice on, I figured the art of reviewing warrants a blog post. How do I assess stuff? Is there a technique, or do I just splurge?

And yes, some of this will be specific to reviewing TV shows, as that is my area.

The above (Time Goes By, a video that's now been removed)  is a song by Feeder which they played on their recent tour, and included on one of their strange ‘Renegades’ EPs that they released during said tour. I include it here because I quite like it, and it doesn’t seem to have made the cut for their new ‘Renegades’ album. Which is sad as it’s better than a fair few of the tracks that actually are on there.

If you want to listen to said album, you can do so here on Spotify. Not sure if I’d recommend it or not. They’ve produced a rather generic bouncy-indie album, really. Loud guitars, bit of shouting; it’s well-made enough but everything is the same basic tempo and it makes the whole record sound a bit samey.

There is a change of pace in the form of Down To The River, but unfortunately it’s a bit plodding and rubbish. The title track and Sentimental are quite decent, as are some others, but they get submerged beneath the raft of similar-sounding tracks.

Shame, as I have a lot of nostalgic love for Feeder and do genuinely want them to succeed, but this really isn’t a great record. Never mind.

A Rare Book Review: Cloud Atlas

Tonight, I finished reading the novel Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (no, not that David Mitchell), which I started a couple of weeks into the new year and have been picking through ever since. In my defence, it is quite long.

I didn’t think many blogs would want my personal opinions about a years-old book, but after completing this Herculean reading task, I felt compelled to type something about it. Cloud Atlas is most memorable for two reasons, I think. Firstly, the sheer scale and ambition of it.

Mitchell crafts a complex saga, comprising of six separate narratives, nestled within each other in Russian doll style. Starting in the nineteenth century, it works its way forward to the far flung future, then works its way back out again. Amongst these strands, ideas about humanity and reincarnation lurk, along with the six distinct storylines themselves. It’s truly an impressive feat.

Hand-in-hand with that is the actual writing. Writing all these different characters, in different time periods with different writing styles and vocabularies is no small accomplishment. He skates genres from detective novel to escape to sci-fi. But Mitchell pulls it off and, worst of all, makes it look easy. He’s clearly a very, very good writer. The bastard.

Seriously, the worst part is the way each of the plots has their own supporting cast and, you get the feeling, could easily sustain a novel of their own. It’s a great book, and although it took me ages to read, I’m compensated by now feeling like I’ve read six different books. I thoroughly recommend it, if you hadn’t guessed.

If I had to complain (and I really do), the scale of the feat being accomplished kinda made me expect something more transcendentally amazing to happen. He’s crafted six engrossing storylines, but they never exactly come together to form a single amazing hypernarrative in the way I was hoping they might. It remains six separate arcs with call-backs going between them.

But that’ll teach me to take back cover blurbs too seriously, really. It remains an amazing work of book-writing, and definitely worth a try.

Avatar - Belated Review

Finally saw Avatar a week ago. However, my brief attempts to interest ‘proper’ blogs in a review didn’t go well, as the movie is now over two months old. So I ended up writing this piece for Dorkadore, focusing on its massive financial success (albeit with a few review-esque snippits).

However, I review things out of love, not just as a “job”. So I wrote a straight review of Avatar and am posting it here for the entertainment of anyone who may care. (Notes: Yes, some points are repeated across the two pieces. And yes, a few small spoilers are contained within.)