Book Cover Blogs

Book cover blogs I look at sometimes:

Jacket Whys – mostly book covers for children and teens.

Book Covers – unusual book covers

article about cheesiest fantastic book covers  and one more on amazing old sci-fi book covers

The Book Review Design is defunct but has some good covers

Book Covers Anonymous – great finds in cover art

Contest for the Best and Worst (so funny) of romance covers & older contests

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Movies I Watched in January 2010

1. Journey and the Labyrinth (2007)
2. Ouran High School Host Club 1:2
3. Castle 1:3
4. My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) rewatched
5. Swimming Pool (2003)
6. Blues Brothers (1980) rewatched
7. Dean Martin: Everybody Loves Somebody (2005)
8. The Proposal (2009)
9. Inkheart (2008)
10. August Rush (2007)
11. House 2:4
12. Fighting Temptations (2003)
13. Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008)
14. Drumline (2002) rewatched
15. The Face is Familiar (2009)
16. Monk 7:2
17. My Family and Other Animals (2005)
18. Dollhouse 1:2 rewatched
19. Monolith Monsters (1957)
20. Watchmen (2009)
21. Accidental Husband (2008)

TV shows

Still enjoying the light mysteries of Castle and Monk.  Listening to Joss Whedon’s commentary on Dollhouse helps me appreciate the series more.

Romantic Movies

Accidental Husband was very sweet, I’ve seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding before, and I found out she’s releasing a new one this year: I Hate Valentine’s Day.

Documentaries: Dean Martin – I didn’t realize how successful he was in his solo career.

Disliked Swimming Pool for its cheating plot and its repulsive protagonist.

My Family and Other Animals – a lovely eccentric UK family story.  The setting and animals are a big plus.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Cover of Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Director: Don Siegel (also directed The Beguiled (1971) which is intense).

Actors: Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter

Source:  Based on a novel by Jack Finney

Story:  A delusion affects the inhabitants of Santa Mira.  People are claiming that their family members are not really them.  Dr. Miles Bennell pooh-poohs these notions until he starts finding aliens pods in basements.

Trivia: The studio insisted on adding a framing story to keep the movie from being as effective.

Comments:

I am fond of the novel which my father read to me when I was sick and couldn’t rest or use my eyes.  I think Siegel’s Body Snatchers is a fair interpretation of the novel.

The movie is well done in moving the hero through the emotional phases of pleasant normalcy to pity for the deluded to confusion to determination to escape to desperation.  Nice job both artistically and technically.

I especially liked that there was no visual evidence of their alien status. The only real indication was that the alien replacements were less emotional than the humans.  Even when the alien activity comes into the open, it’s still organized and low-key.  I also thought that the idea that all the aliens need is for the humans to sleep to destroy them.

One of the chilling moments has an alien planning with relief the replacement of a human baby.   Another moment has a boy protesting to kindly, condescending adults that his mother is different.  Maybe these scenes were more disturbing to me because there’s not much an infant or a child could in face of this kind of attack.

A subplot is Miles wooing of Becky, newly divorced and back in town.  Miles has been divorced too and they refer to their marital state as “going to Reno.”  They obviously are delighted to see each other but they have to be careful not let their feelings discovered by her father and later by the aliens.  In the first scene, she’s wearing an inappropriate strapless gown in the daytime.  I wonder if this is a hint that she’s a bit ‘fast.’  She and Miles banter a lot in the first part of the movie, notably in the scene in which she claims that having sex would be “madness.”  She spends the night chastely.

Unfortunately, they are soon fighting for their lives and have no time for romance.  In a rather sad scene, after social protocol is broken down due to the aliens, Becky sobs that she wants to have children. (She was childless in her first marriage.)

Good movie – worth seeing.

Review by feoamante.com

Background on the film by Hollywood Gothique

Insightful review from the Sci-Fi Block.

Review from Moria

Briefly discusses the relationship between Miles and Becky from classic-horror.

Books I read in January 2010

1. To Seduce a Sinner by Elizabeth Hoyt
2. To Beguile a Beast by Elizabeth Hoyt
3. Organizing from the Inside Out by Julie Morgenstern
4. Danny Dunn, Scientific Detective by Jay Williams
5. Bachelor Prince by Debbie Macomber (manga)
6. My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult – post 1, post 2
7. We Gotta Have It by Esther Iverem
8. Empowered vol. 1 by Adam Warren (graphic novel)
9. Sandman Companion by Hy Bender
10. Coraline by Neil Gaiman
11. Ideal Wife by Mary Balogh
12. Beast by Donna Jo Napoli
13. In Odd We Trust by Queenie Chan & Dean Koontz
14. Pharaoh’s Daughter by Julius Lester

Unhappy Customers

Not Always Right allows anonymous posting about funny or strange customers.

Here are some funny ones:

Snakes on a Plane

True and Not True

Passion of the Christ

Wizard of Oz movie

Pan’s Labyrinth

Furniture – It was a different business but I’ve had this conversation.

Harry Potter books

Book Title

Console Confusion

Keyboard

Video Game – kind of sweet

ramblings

I am having a busy week and all my thoughts are stale.  I’ll just ramble a bit.

Picked up the book The Lightning Thief and Nim’s Island from the library.  Both appear charming and I doubt that the film versions caught the whimsical tone of either book.

Still watching season 2 of House MD.  Cameron is less annoying since the writers dialed down her smugness a bit.

Watched a Starz special on character actors The Face is Familiar.  The choice to focus on how hard it is to get roles in Hollywood films was a poor one.  I would have preferred seeing any old Hollywood actors and seeing contemporary ones in more depth.

I managed to watch 4 musicals recently (at least I think of them as musicals): Blues Brothers, Drumline, August Rush and The Fighting Temptations.  They were all a lot of fun, although I had seen Drumline and the Blues Brothers years ago.

In the middle of Pharoah’s Daughter by Julius Lester.  I have Escape from Egypt by Sonia Levitin and Temples, Tombs & Hieroglyphs by Barbara Mertz (Amelia Peabody mysteries) on hand too.  I didn’t realize the common theme until today.

Danny Dunn, Scientific Detective

Image by Phoenix Dark-Knight via Flickr

Recently, I found an old copy of Danny Dunn and decided to reread it.  Most of the series books I read as a kid such as are disappointing now.  I wasn’t expecting much but I thought Danny Dunn, Scientific Detective was surprisingly readable.

Danny’s mentor Professor Bullfinch builds a scent-detecting security system for a large department store.  The managers basically are identified by their unique scent print. When Bullfinch goes off to a conference and one of the managers goes missing, Danny, Irene and Joe use the scent-detector to track him down.

Irene was as much a scientist as Danny, though she wasn’t the leader of the group.  Joe played Watson, helping the authors give facts to clarify what was going on.

My favorite in the series was the “Smallifying Machine.”

The books move quickly and except for their science geekery, the kids and the adults speak and make decisions that are reasonable enough.

A retrospective on Danny Dunn series from Geek Dad.

information on Danny Dunn series and its creators.

Wikipedia entry.

series information on the Internet Book List.

Jay Williams’ information on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.

early 2010 movie releases

Just some movies releasing in the beginning of the year that I’d like to see.  Some of these I’ll watch at home.

Daybreakers – SF Horror.  Scientist opposes the dominant species: vampires. I like some mad scientist in my vampire flicks.

When in Rome – Romantic Comedy. Girl in Rome pursued by unlikely suitors. I like Rome on film and have a soft spot for Kristen Bell.

Lightning Thief – Fantasy Adventure.  Teen tackles the Olympians.  I’m a sucker for Greco-Roman mythology.

Wolfman – Horror.  Please, let it be anything but embarrassing & lame.

Shutter Island – Thriller.  Man investigates a missing patient at a hospital for the criminally insane on an island in a hurricane.  Intelligent and heartwarming, I’m sure.

Cop Out – Buddy Cop. Kevin Smith directs.  I’ll watch it but I dunno.

The Crazies – Horror.  Something’s in the water.  I like its simplicity.

Hot Tub Time Machine – Comedy. Four men time travel to the 1980s. They admit in the trailer that it’s stupid.

The Runaways – Biopic. Looking forward to this one although I don’t know their music.

Clash of the Titans - Fantasy. Perseus kills CGI monsters. Liked the original for its effects mostly.

How to Train Your Dragon – Fantasy. Viking named Hiccup adopts a baby dragon. I’ll watch it mostly because it’s animated.

Mother – Drama. Mother hunts for murderer to exonerate her son.

link: Princess and the Frog

This is a thoughtful and interesting review of Princess and the Frog.

Inkheart (2008)

Cover of Inkheart

Story:  A girl and her father go on a quest to save her mother who has vanished by magic.

Director:  Ian Softley  (Hackers, Wings of the Dove)

Author:  It’s based on a trilogy of  fantasies by Cornelia Funke.  They are Inkheart, Inkspell, and Inkdeath. I attempted to read the first book this summer but failed.  I might try again now that I’ve seen the movie.

Cast:  Brendan Fraser (Mo); Eliza Bennett (Meggie); Paul Bettany (Dustfingers); Helen Mirren, Jim Broadbent

Comments: I enjoyed seeing Brendan Fraser again.  I seem to have lost track of him but maybe he’ll make a few more movies.  I also was happy to see Paul Bettany again since I liked him so much as Chaucer in A Knight’s Tale.

Helen Mirren is a treat in the movie, and lent it an air of authenticity as it grew more fantastical.

The concept of reading stories aloud can make them real is an entertaining one.  However, it begs the question why unscrupulous people wouldn’t read a sci-fi military book and pull out  a bunch of advanced weapons and take over the world.  Apparently, the books on hand were set in historical periods.

Roger Ebert pointed out that it might scare children that if they read aloud, their mothers will disappear.  That’s a good point but, although, it can’t be much more disturbing than Labyrinth’s premise.

It takes the movie an extraordinarily long time to reveal why and how the mother went missing.  Once the action starts up, everything moves along smartly.

Worth it?  Yes.

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• Inkheart (popsyndicate.com)