So at some point in the last year a geeky/nerdy "themed" cafe opened up in my current hometown and having gone there a few times now makes me extra sad that what can only be called "the nerd boom" (with how being nerdy has become a lot more mainstream than it ever has before, your milage may vary whether this is a good thing or not) only happened once I had gone off to college since I would have loved to have hung out and met people at this cafe when I was in high school. Of course this isn't going to stop me from hanging out at it for the next couple of months and while a friend and I were casting about for something to do she remembered that they also show indie films there and the one they were showing this week seemed kind of interesting so why not see an indie documentary about a famous magician?
Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay
Summary: Ricky Jay is a fantastic magician whose been preforming for years and along the way he's gotten a lot of help, and stories, from earlier pros.
The Good: This may sound a bit odd but my favorite part of this whole documentary was a rather short bit with a British journalist who had come to interview Ricky Jay as he was working with someone on a film (a different one than this I believe) and she summed up his personality rather well, the good and the bad of it. I was a bit surprised they had even included that part, usually when you see a documentary about a living person they don't outright state their flaws, but since this was a story about both Ricky Jay and about all the magicians he met it makes more sense and I plan on trying to find her article to read later on. What really makes this documentary work however is that it's clear that Ricky Jay is a fantastic magician, I've never heard of him so the documentary had to convince me on it's own but it did a great job and Ricky Jay also did a great job at showing why all his various mentors were so inspiring to him through all his various stories. He choose good stories, they were all the right length, the film didn't seem like it had too many or too few, this just felt like a well-thought out and produced documentary all around.
The Bad: Even though this film was barely an hour and a half long it still felt a little long to me and I would have liked it to have been a little shorter. I'm not sure what I would have cut out since nothing felt superfluous, but it did seem to drag a little at times and I would have liked it if the pacing was a bit snappier. Other than that, since I'm not a stage magic aficionado I felt like some things, such as references and stories about quite a few magicians from the 20th century, went over my head. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but this isn't a film with a wide audience and while I do think it was good and people should see it if interested but if the initial summary or this review hasn't made you interested in it skip it and watch something that does have your attention instead.
Production Values: Thankfully, unlike the last documentary I talked about, this one was competently done! There were two hiccups where the screen looked a bit weird during the film but, since these were at points when the film was showing some very very old footage I don't know if they were problems with the footage (which they decided to use anyway), a problem with the specific DVD used for this showing, or an encoding problem that affects all of the DVDs. In any case, while annoying both of those moments were short enough that it didn't draw me out of the film long. There were a couple of scenes which I would have filmed differently (tip, if you've been focusing on the same, unmoving subject for so long that you have to zoom both in and out to keep it interesting you probably need another camera angle to intersperse) but as I've said before, I'm fine if documentaries aren't super visually interesting and as it was this one worked just fine.
I'm giving this 3 out of 5 stars for being well done and worth seeing if it sounds interesting, and I'll probably remember it for a while since I've never seen a documentary about this before, but in the end it just wasn't for me and I found it a bit dull.
I was thrilled to find this book at the local library since I had heard a lot of good things about it and had recently tried to get it through a few contests but wasn't lucky. When I first heard of this book I was a bit confused though since all the summaries made it sound like it was either starting in media res or was the sequel to another book I couldn't find. So, in case anyone else was confused about that, yes this is the first book in a series and so it does start a little bit in the middle of things. That is one of the problems I have with the book however so let's get to the review so I can elaborate.
Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas
I know I don't talk about covers as much as I used to but I wanted to say that I think I like the paperback cover just a little more than this cover used on the hardbacks. This cover did look just a tad too blue to me in person (I would have put a bit more yellow into the buildings) but there's nothing I really dislike about it, I simply really liked the starkness of the paperback cover (and also how it matches the cover for the sequel, Crown of Midnight). Although, while looking for pictures I came across this photo for the German cover and I might like that one best of all.
Summary: Once Calaena was known as the Assassin of Adarlan and had the skills to match that lofty title, until the country was invaded by it's neighbor and Calaena was sent to the salt mines as a punishment. She holds out for a year at which point the prince of her new country approaches her with a proposal, fight in this seemingly insane competition his father has come up with to choose his champion and after four years she'll be free to go wherever she please. While she's not thrilled with the prospect Calaena is no idiot and agrees, only to find that there are darker secrets lurking within the castle and it might not be the competition that kills her.
The Good: I'm a bit on the fence how I feel about the love triangle but, since it was never the main focus of the story I was more or less alright with it. I also noticed glancing at a few reviews (I needed to double check some spelling, normally I don't go looking for reviews of books after I've read them) that some people despised Calaena and I'm not one of those people. With a character who is stated to be one of the best assassins in the world at such a young age I am expecting someone who is not only competent at almost everything they do but also proud of it (also I have no problem with a character who likes clothes when the descriptions were as interesting as they were here, for once I actually believed the characters when they said a gown was beautiful!). I'm curious what the next book will bring since, while this story was conclusively wrapped up, I'm really curious what troubles Calaena will encounter next and what those will mean for her and the kingdom. For once I have no idea where Maas plans to take this story and I'm eager to find out!
The Bad: This book just feels like it's missing a prologue and, considering it barely elaborates on Calaena's past this drove me nuts. To make this crystal clear, this book starts in a logical place for this particular story to start with Calaena after her defeat being offered a chance to change that, we just seem to have skipped the first book. Now, obviously the next book (or one after that, I don't know how long this series will be) could fix that but, since Maas has put up a series of short stories about Calaena's story before the mines (each for $0.99 on places such as Amazon, hence why I haven't read them yet) this makes me think that she won't, she's already explained what happened. Really that's my biggest problem with the story but, since has a huge impact on Caleana's character, it's not exactly a minor problem.
So this book earns a 4 out of 5 for me, lack of prologue not withstanding since there is actually a way to find out what happened if I remember to do so. And if you liked this book I'll recommend (/if you liked this books I would recommend this one) Grave Mercy (which I suppose I should start keeping an ear out for the sequel) and the Star Crossed/Liar's Moon duo (which I'll admit is mostly because of the "character has a past which is currently unresolved/explained and likely to remain that way" part, although the settings and leads are similar, Calaena has more in common with Digger than she does with Ismae).
Yet another strange thing I pulled from a library, this time from the not-so-local library whose stock of manga and comics I am rapidly consuming, and I went for this one purely because I've read a series by Jane Yolen that involved dragons and liked it (it's also one of my examples of just how weirdly close fantasy and science fiction can be, literally the only thing that keeps it from being fantasy is the fact that it's on a colony planet in the future with low technology, just about everything else could have fit into a fantasy novel). And hey, I've read things for far stranger reasons before, let's see how this one does!
The Last Dragon Written by Jane Yolen, illustrated by Rebecca Guay
Summary: There have been no dragons on the isles of May in centuries but, as is often the case in stories, one dragon egg survived, slumbering, until a mishap cracks it open and as dragons are wont to do it soon grows and begins to devour anything it can find. The islanders remember the old tales but they are not dragonslayers so while they do all the can they also begin a search for someone who can kill the beast before they all perish.
The Good: I suspect this story is a comic instead of being a prose short story is because of how short it really is. It took me next to no time at all to read it and without the artwork I would have finished it even faster which I suppose means that this was a good choice format wise. The story flowed well and the pacing was quick which also fit the story well, but other than those technical details there was nothing about the story which really grabbed me enough to like it or even find memorable. So let's move onto that:
The Bad: While not bad or terrible the story just felt, flat. We've all seen stories about the last dragon (or more rarely some other mythical creature) awakening and wrecking havoc and we've all seen stories about unlikely hero(s) coming together to defeat it using cleverness instead of sheer strength. And this story just didn't play with any of these ideas, everything played out exactly the way you expected, from the overall story to how the characters interacted and for me that makes for a dull read. This time I can't even say "but it's old so of course I've seen other, later, stories do it better," nope this is from 2011 and, even if it theoretically spent a long time in development, it's still new enough that everyone involved must have seen the story in a dozen iterations elsewhere and I can't help but wonder why it's so dull then.
The Art: This might be me seeing something that's not there, however while I liked the art there were a number of pages I saw which looked unfinished, as if a few layers or filters had been left off and I noticed that when simply reading through, not carefully rereading just for the art. Again, this could be me but it threw me out of the story a little bit, when I came back to it I developed the same opinions about the art that I had for the story, it works, it's fine (I do like the style) but it didn't really add anything to the story (except time spent reading) or do anything with it that I find truly memorable, this isn't a story I expect to remember any longer than a few months down the road.
I guess I'll give this one a 2.5 out of 5 since it's certainly technically competent and not terrible but, like last week, if for some reason someone does want to read a story about the last dragon or whatnot tell me, I'm sure I can think of a better story for you to read instead.
As I said previously, I really want to watch even more Classic Doctor Who this summer and, presented with a small selection at the local college library and no recommendations I panicked and decided that I might as well start with the beginning. In light of the fact that this episode is just a few months under 50 years old I'm going to cut out the production values part of the review since, well, it's a 50 year old tv episode, it's not going to look fantastic (and I might do this for other first doctor episodes since I rather doubt I'll have more to say on them). With that in mind, onto the review and I'm going to try and make sure that all of my reviews go back to their proper days this week, sorry about all of that everyone!
Doctor Who: An Unearthly Child
Summary: Ian and Barbara are school teachers who both are having trouble with one of their more brilliant students, a young teen named Susan who seems to both know more about their subjects than they do and also is bored by a lot of parts of them. Under the pretense of being concerned about her sudden bad grades the two attempt to find out where she lives with her grandfather but all they find at the address is an old junkyard with, well, junk and a police box inside. As any sci-fi fan knows this is not a police box however and soon all four of them find themselves in 10,000 BCE and caught up in a fight between cavemen.
The Good: As I believe I've said before, I like it when the Doctor is written as a slightly darker, or even just grumpier, character and the Doctor here is a quite grumpy old man. It's a little hard to reconcile that with the man who stole a TARDIS to explore the universe, although considering that element must have been added in earlier I'll live (heck, here Susan says that she came up with tardis as a nickname which is completely different from what the rest of the series implies, again especially considering these are details I can let them slide here). Funny enough I think I liked the way this serial introduced the companions and the Doctor more than how a lot of the Nu Who companions were introduced, probably because I like the "ordinary people thrown into adventure" trope quite a bit (although I do feel like that scene dragged a bit, although that was certainly just to fill time within the episode) and after seeing Nu Who repeat the "person tries to track down the Doctor" trick a few times it's gotten a bit dull. Plus Ian and Barbara clicked for me almost immediately, I hope they stay around for a while since I want more adventures with them in it, well, I would like one detail to go away though.
The Bad: There was a lot of screaming in this serial, like enough to fill a slasher horror film. It was a bit jarring since in The Aztecs there was no screaming at all and I've got the second and third serials checked out to watch next so I'll be interested to see if Barbara and Susan (but mostly Barbara) gradually stop screaming or if that was written out early on for being annoying (it also felt a little incongruent with Barbara's character earlier in the episode and with the fact that Susan is an adventurer, I really hope that all the screaming vanishes sooner rather than later).
I feel like someone told me before that this serial wasn't really worth watching, or maybe that it wasn't that good, and while it certainly wasn't the best there's no reason I'd advise people to not watch it. It drags a bit and the characterization is a bit off but considering that later Doctor Who serials do refer back to it, and that in general it's good to know where something comes from, but it's hardly a bad serial and with the break until November it's not as if fans don't have the time to watch the older stuff.
Yep I'm switching up these reviews too, I didn't realize until this morning that my viewing schedule had been thrown off just enough that I didn't have anything for today. Thankfully since I know that even a 13 episode anime series takes a me a while to get through I plan those out quite a while in advance so I can talk about that! And in case anyone is wondering if there is any methodology or reasoning about what, previous season shows I choose to review, no not really at this point. Initially I was actually going to watch Sankarea but since I needed something new to watch starting the day I got my wisdom teeth out and after that operation I wasn't in the mood for anything involving death/possible blood and gore so I went for something I knew was going to be sweet and safe. Besides, a friend and I had already checked out one episode of the show and I knew a lot of people who liked it so that meant I stood a good chance of liking it as well, right?
Love Live! School Idol Project
Summary: Honoka and her friends love their high school and are crushed to hear that starting next year it won't be accepting new students due to low application numbers and will shut down after three years. After brainstorming about ways to save the school Honoka takes an odd approach, why don't they become School Idols, a popular new fad, and use the popularity they generate to help attract people to the school so it wont' shut down!
The Good: Aside from the fact that one character has the rather out of place character quirk of grabbing other girl's chests (note to male writers, while girls may discuss boobs in real life we generally employ a "look don't touch" policy unless it escalates to something else and this is not a yuri show) this was a pretty squeaky clean show that I'd have no problem showing a middle schooler. I doubt many American middle school kids would have an interest in the show, these kinds of idols are pretty different from American Idol after all, but I wouldn't have any qualms about showing it to my little sister. And the show ended in a much better place than I expected it to, for a while it seemed like it was waffeling around about what to make into it's ending but I think in the end the show figured that out and ended well.
The Bad: This was a bit of a dull show, some of the side characters got more development than others but I think just about everyone needed more than they had (lead character Honoka certainly needed it, I know that the genki, upbeat female lead is to shojo as the hot blooded, gung-ho boy is to shonen but that doesn't mean there's no room for character development). I'll admit that with 13 episodes, a central cast of nine characters, some of whom don't even join the group until around the 9th episode (which was utterly frustrating considering how the OP and ED made it clear this was happening*), is going to be hard to develop but I'm sure they could have pulled it off and with a show that's more character driven than plot driven you have to do it. So with no characters I was especially invested in and a relatively uncomplicated plot there just wasn't much for me here other than the cute outfits I'm sure I'll see cosplayed at cons for several years.
The Production Values: My favorite parts of the show were by far the musical numbers and, while I don't feel the need to buy any of the singles, the songs were all competently sung and thankfully translated. I'll admit it, the main reason my friend and I initially tried this show was because the outfits looked like they would be cute to cosplay, hey that's one of the main reasons I tried Revolutionary Girl Utena as well, being attracted to a show in a stylized, visual medium, is hardly as shallow as it first sounds. And the show looks good, it's funny to see people talking (read: complaining) about the CG used in the dance sequences after AKB0048 since it's much subtler and less-often used here. Here the CG shots are of no more than three girls at a time, short, and interspersed among the traditionally animated shots so while noticeable that really shouldn't be a deal breaker for anyone.
With all of that in mind I'm giving the show a 2.5 out of 5 and will not be either buying NISA's wonderful box set or trying out the second season which was announced today. However, if anyone does want to try the show it's streaming on crunchyroll and as I mentioned earlier they were even able to translate all of the songs which was fantastic.
*as I've said before, mostly in book reviews, but I adhere to the school of thought that your readers/viewers are going to figure out the plot "twists" and therefore you should try to delay revealing them as little as possible after that moment or else there's little point in having a "twist".
