Hey kids (and by ‘kids’ I mean mature and responsible readers), welcome back to The Book Report!

Today I want to talk about a genre of books that have been around for almost eighty years: Sword and Sorcery fantasy, which you could also call pulp fantasy. Pulp fantasy was birthed, almost solely, from the mind of Robert E. Howard with his Kull (the Atlantian, first appearing in 1929) and Conan (the Cimmerian, first appearing in 1932) characters.

Pulp fantasy has many distinct differences from its younger, generally better received brother High fantasy (C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, thought of to be the fathers of high fantasy, didn’t publish their novels until later; The Hobbit came out in 1936 and the first Narnia novel came out in 1949). With High fantasy, generally speaking, the whole world is at stake and the heroes are set with the herculean task of saving it. Pulp fantasy typically deals with isolated conflicts and battles. The main characters of High fantasy typically have heroism thrust upon whether they want it or (most often) not. Pulp fantasy heroes start the book as heroes and end the book (if they survive) as heroes.
The past and future struggles of Good vs. Evil matter much less in Pulp fantasy than in High fantasy. With the world at stake in High fantasy, why the conflict occurs and preventing the conflict from ever occurring again matter greatly. Consider most Pulp fantasy to be more of a snap shot of a heroes life: merely one conflict out of many.

Another possible difference is that High Fantasy would typically pass the Bechdel Test while Pulp fantasy typically won’t. The Bechdel Test is named after Alison Bechdel, who popularized it in her comic Dykes to Watch Out For. Rule 1: It has to have at least two women in it (further clarification has added that the two women have names). Rule 2: The women have to have a conversation. Rule 3. The conversation can’t be about a man. While the Bechdel Test doesn’t necessarily make movies better, it is certainly interesting how few movies actually pass the test. In pulp fantasy, unless the main character is a woman, female dialogue generally revolves around the hero. It’s not a bad thing, frankly. The hero is the whole point of the book. But it does serve as a distinction between High and Pulp fantasy.

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Moving on…

One of my favorite series of pulp fantasy stories is the Drenai Saga by David Gemmell. He published the first novel, Legend, in 1984 and it hit bookshelves with all the weight of a double-bladed axe. The story is simple: the Nadir horde (think Mongolians) attack the Drenai (think English) keep of Dros Delnoch, the gateway to the rest of the Drenai lands. The dying Earl of Bronze, lord of Dros Delnoch, sends a plea for help to Druss, a retired old hero. The old man answers the call and joins the defenders. The rest of the book is the battle. There is very little magic in the novel; the main focus is on the ordinary soldiers required to become heroic to survive. Outnumbered 50 to 1, will the tiny but brave Drenai force hold against the barbarian mass?

The series follows essentially the same formula as Legend. A hero teams up with a few other heroes (and occasionally some soldiers) and faces overwhelming odds to achieve his quest, though the victory ends up being a Pyrrhic one.

Gemmell eventually wrote eleven novels about the Drenai before his death in 2006, but not in chronological order. Legend, if placed chronologically, would have been Book 7. Each book is fairly self-contained; you generally don’t need to know too much about the earlier books to enjoy them, though strictly for continuity’s sake I recommend starting at the beginning of the Drenai history rather than follow Gemmell’s publication dates. You can check out the chronological list here.
The Drenai Saga is a series of fun, quick reads, perfect for bed time or trips where you’re looking for light reading without the cliffhanger endings that a high fantasy series gives you until its conclusion however many books later. Gemmell knows how to write a hero very well, and part of what makes it so interesting is how he shows how ultimately disappointing and horrific the life of a hero is.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Sgt. Angle Reporting for Duty!

Imagine a black Spider-Man brought to the silver screen in the reboot of the franchise. Or a red-headed Marty McFly instead of hip young Michael J. Fox. Or how about the Mustache Menace Tom Selleck dodging a rolling boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark?

These are just a few of the no-doubt hundreds of “almost-but-never-were” casting choices in movies past.

Casting can make or break a film’s believability, it’s entertainment factor, and its’ awards chances. Imagine the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air cracking jokes as Neo in The Matrix — or even defending the U.S. as Captain America. Or one of the raunchiest comedians of the 80s, Eddie Murphy, aboard the Starship Enterprise.

Or Abed as Shaft:

You’re likely these days to read more about actors cast against-type than replacing someone they admire. Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx were originally cast in each others’ eventual roles in Law Abiding Citizen — a viewer might say this hurt the movie as a whole, that Foxx can’t play straight, and Butler is not psychotic enough (then this person would watch 300 and say.…“oh”). Sissy Spacek and Carrie Fisher swapped roles in completely different movies (Carrie and Star Wars, respectively) after Fisher refused to go nude for Brian De Palma’s horror flick.

I could go on and on about how The Godfather was almost played by crooning Frank Sinatra instead of the pitch-perfect Marlon Brando, but you would get lost in a sea of useless trivia. Instead, I wanted to pose a question to the filmmakers and enthusiasts out there, and perhaps spark a discussion: Why don’t you take more chances on casting?

After all, Darren Aronofsky lifted Mickey Rourke out from under a rock to put him at the center of The Wrestler, and when no one wanted to utter her name, Lindsay Lohan was plunked into the middle of Robert Altman’s final feature film A Prairie Home Companion — and played her part very well indeed.

When casting rumors swirled around the roles of The Joker and Two-Face in The Dark Knight, everyone went nuts. You all remember them: Sean Penn, Michael Keaton(?), Crispin Glover [JOKER], Ryan Phillippe, Liev Shreiber, Josh Lucas [TWO-FACE]. Even when Heath Ledger was officially announced, some chose not to believe while others stood firm that Crispin Glover would’ve been the last person to play the role.

And then the movie came out, and you know the rest.

Recently, there was a swirl of guesses, some known, others unknown, over who would play Spider-Man in the unnecessary yet inevitable reboot of that franchise. Andrew Garfield won the part, stifling all the noise, but in an interesting twist on the rumor mill, two actors tried to throw themselves into the role.

The first, Josh Hutcherson, went with the old audition tape technique:

As you can see, the dude hired some stunt guys and tried really hard to show he can fight. The problem with an audition tape such as this is: it doesn’t show that you can act. Barely says two words, and the clunkers he hired to act around him only serve to distract the watcher from whatever point Hutcherson was trying to make. Not only that, but he’s not an inspired choice, he’s too similar to the previous web-head Tobey Maguire to make much of an impression.

The other fierce fighter for the role of Peter Parker was the hilarious Donald Glover, of “Community” fame. Glover has charm, wit, a great physique, and appears to maintain a steady hold on his character work. He issued a stream of tweets in a campaign to get himself hired for the role, but it never really got as far as Betty White’s Facebook campaign to host SNL. The other factor that probably played against Glover, on multiple levels: He’s Black.

Unfortunately, studios fail to see the draw of having a black man step into the shoes of a traditionally white role. Black men have starred in comic book adaptations before –Blade being the most popular among them — but we’ve never scene a black star take on the role of a comic book hero that is usually seen as white. Would this work? I think it would, and that it’s past due for it to happen.

Recently, Will Smith’s son Jaden starred in the remake of The Karate Kid, updating the story for a new generation and casting the character in a new light (I don’t know if that’s a pun of some kind, but if it is, it’s totally unintended). The result was a successful film both at the box office and in its’ storyline.Why not take another already established character, from the comic book world, and recast with a black lead? Spider-Man would’ve been the top choice.

Would a black Superman or Batman do anything for you? There were rumors of Eddie Murphy playing the Riddler in the next Batman film (totally false, by the way). If that were true in any sense, would it change the way you look at Batman, or would it open the door to a different angle on a classic tale?

Would it change anything at all…?

Thoughts below. Type them. Brief me…

Dismissed!

Sgt. Angle

These days, it is easy to admit that there is a change in the way we interact with the world around us. There are powerful developments that keep proliferating exponentially in our world, and they threaten to change the very foundation of our lives. But what is it exactly, that causes us to change so? Why is there a frightening speed up in our technology? What is changing in the way that we communicate? These are some of the questions that I certainly have, and I’m sure that these are some of the questions that you have often wondered yourself. Recently, I have been reading a man who foresaw a massive shift in the way in which humans communicate through the use of physical and cognitive technology; his name is Marshall McLuhan. He is gaining in popularity and is even referenced in this episode of “Mad Men:”

Marshall McLuhan is perhaps most famous for the phrase turned book-title “The medium is the message.” The most important factor in this quote falls on the verb “is.” He very purposely wanted to associate the medium AS the message. The message is completely immersed within the medium that it is delivered in. Medium, in this case, refers to any form of technology. Some examples of mediums are objects and concepts like: the alphabet, the wheel, the airplane, the photograph, the automobile, etc. The argument that he puts forth constantly stresses his idea that the message is limited and encapsulated in the medium that becomes the delivery system for other humans to ingest. This can mean that in order for humans to develop new messages, they must first develop new technologies. It is really not as simple as all that, and I am paraphrasing hugely, but I believe an example may prove useful in illuminating what McLuhan may be commenting upon.

“The media is the message.” This is the mantra we will hold to when looking to analyze a technology; in this case, we will dissect the cellular phone. When the cellular phone first came onto the scene, there was a general agreement from the population that this would be a beneficial extension of the telephone. Before, one would have to find a payphone or a landline in order to initiate a conversation. Therefore, the position of land-line telephones were typically in enclosed booths or quiet rooms where one could hold a conversation. Even early cordless phones had a severely limited range that would barely function more than a room away. Either way, phone calls were only answered when a person was home. If no one was home, then no one could even hear the call coming. A person would not know if they had missed a call unless the answering machine had picked up (providing they had one) or they would simply be permanently unaware of the call that had been placed to their number. Therefore, the kinds of messages that we provided on the phone were more intimate. Because of the reasons listed above (the privacy of the location, the fixed position of the phone within the home, and the possibility of missing a phone call forever) the conversations that we had were deeper in personal narrative and experience, but they closed us off from the rest of the population at the same time. In the days of the landline, there was a degree of confidence in one’s privacy. Even the phone-booth was a recognition of one’s need for privacy and intimacy whilst on the telephone. Contrast this kind of communication with those of the modern-day cell-phones. Today’s cell phones balk at privacy. We’ve all been standing in some sort of line and heard details of a person’s existence that we care nothing about. Gone is the partition that secures an intimate environment. Today’s cell-phones also have features that ensure that if anyone dials your number, you will know about it. Likewise, there is no part of the house that is kept quiet because the telephone is housed in there. The very design of a home changes based on an extension of a new device. Of course, this is only a brief example, but I believe that it illuminates the way in which we interact with technologies.

So why do I bring up McLuhan into a blog that is about paranormal experiences, events, and theories? In many ways, McLuhan realizes that humans are already cyborgs. That is, he sees human consciousness and culture in terms of the types of technologies that we utilize. What is fascinating is that this man wrote primarily in the sixties and seventies about the impact that technologies would have as they evolved and developed. Though there are ideas that he postulates that seem obsolete, there are many, many truths in his works that seem to be represented in our society today. Further, McLuhan also has unique insights into the way in which media can be used as a tool for statecraft. Certainly, the rapid release of technologies seems to be having a severe impact on the way in which we interact with other countries in our global village (another term that was coined by McLuhan). To give you a better idea of how this man reasoned in action, here he is in a part of the Today Show, discussing the amplifier blow-out during the Carter-Ford debate of 1976. In particular, pay attention to what he says about the amplifier and how it “revolted.”

For further reading and watching of Marshall McLuhan, check out these sites:

Understanding Media: The extensions of man.

Official Website of Marshall McLuhan

Here is a link to purchase the book, “The Medium is the Message.” The family owns the rights to all his work, so feel free to support them if you so see fit.

Good Morning Semantinkers!

First, I want to say how excited I am about our first trade paperback, MYTHOI Book 1: Birth being released tomorrow! It looks great, and for those who have ordered your copy, you will not be disappointed. Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, let’s move on shall we? The other night I was reading through my STARMAN omnibi (I think thats the plural of omnibus) and came across the magnificent HELLBOY/BATMAN/ STARMAN crossover at the end of omnibus #4. I know what you are thinking, “Why were you reading STARMAN again? You read that book too much!” Well let me just say that some books are always going to kick ass, no matter how many times you read them (like, oh, say MYTHOI). However, I digress. Reading the crossover got me to thinking about how much I used to really love the inter-company crossover event, so today I am going to share my favorite crossover books.

Hellboy/Batman/ Starman: This crossover is just straight up fun. James Robinson (writer of STARMAN at the time) wrote this two-parter, with Mike Mignola (HELLBOY creator) providing the art. If you love angry ancient gods, witty dialogue, mystically powered super-Nazis, moody art, towns with large telescopes pointed at them, or random super-teamups, then you should definitely give this book a look.

Spider-man/ Batman: To be fair, I haven’t read this book in a few years, but I have fond memories of it. THere were actually two SPIDERMAN/ BATMAN crossovers that I know of, but the one that I am speaking of here was titled “Disordered Minds” and featured Spidey and Bats taking on The Joker and Carnage. The creative team was J.M. DeMatteis and Mark Bagley (who really should be considered as one of the seminal SPIDER-MAN artists). At the time I thought this one was dark and moody and cool. I’m afraid if I go back and re-read it I will be disappointed.

X-Men/ Teen Titans: This comic actually got me into X-men and the Teen Titans as a kid (well this and the “Pryde of the X-men” cartoon I got from Pizza Hut with Aussie Wolverine). Chris Claremont channeled his inner Marv Wolfman (TEEN TITANS writer at the time) and the always amazing Walt Simonson made both teams look amazing. This was a case of two books in their prime meshing perfectly. Darkside hunting for the phoenix force? Awesome. Wolverine vs. Deathstroke? Whatever is better than awesome, that’s what it was. Today, the book is somewhat dated, but still a fun and nostalgic read.

WildC.A.T.s/ Aliens: This one gets a mention for the sheer fact that I can’t think of another crossover that actually led to proper comic book continuity being effected. In the story (penned by Warren Ellis with art by Chris Sprouse), Aliens wind up on the Stormwatch space station and wreck house, only to be stopped by the WildC.A.T.s . Without this crossover, we never would have gotten THE AUTHORITY. So thank you Aliens, without your acid blood and face-hugging love, we might never have gotten one of the greatest comics of the last 20 years.

Batman/ The Darkness: You might notice that there are a ton of Batman-centric crossovers on this list. Why? Because they just seem to be the best. Deal With it. This one makes the list because David Finch and Marc Silvestri both draw a crazy good Batman AND an even better Darkness. The story is “meh” (Jeph Loeb and Scott Lobdell aren’t Alan Moore) but damn is it pretty.

Batman/ Planetary: Probably the best book on the list. This one shot from the regular PLANETARY team of Warren Ellis and John Cassaday chasing after a guy who can’t control his rather violent ability to change reality around himself. The hunt happens in Gotham City, so when the reality shifting guy starts to freak out and change reality, we get to see the Planetary team square off against several versions of Batman, including “Dark Knight Returns” Bats, “Adam West” Bats, and super-futuristic Batman. This is actually still available in the PLANETARY trade “Crossing Worlds”, so pick this up if you get a chance.

Spawn & Cerebus: Macabre and magnificent all at once, this special early issue of spawn was actually guest written by CEREBUS creator Dave Sim. In the book, Cerebus shows Spawn the “Hell of Comic Book Characters”. It’s basically a poke at Marvel and DC, but how can you go wrong with a Sim/ Todd McFarlane team up?

Superman/ Muhammad Ali: This isn’t really an inter-company crossover so much as an inter-awesome crossover. Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams (heavyweights in their own right) put together this titanic tale of triumph. The art is beautiful, and some of the script must have been written by Ali himself (“It’s the sweet Science, and I’m the professor!” “Im gonna whup him and spank him!”).  If you ever get a chance to check this one out, do yourself a favor and do so.

That’s it for today folks. If I missed your favorite crossover, please share! Did you love Darkseid vs. Galactus? Have a soft spot for Cyberfrog vs. Creed? Still have your signed copy of Warrior Nun Areala/Avengelyne? Let me know. Thanks for stopping in, and if you haven’t reserved your copy of the MYTHOI Book 1: Birth TPB yet, do so now! Oh, and make sure you cruise on over to entertheletters.com to play our MYTHOI BIRTH game. Great prizes await the winner!  Ill see you all next week!

Hey kids, welcome back to The You-Know-What! Just two more days until the first Mythoi trade hits the general consumer market, so go pre-order immediately.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Quantum Theory and ways fiction writers use it for stories, and one of those ways was time travel. This got me thinking about the number of different time-travel novels I’ve enjoyed, and so I thought I’d take The Book Report on its own journey through time, examining time travel literature.

The Long Sleep
Perhaps the earliest time-travel story occurs in the 4th century Hindu script of the Mahabharatha, concerning King Revaita. He travels to Brahma to ask who among the candidates would be a worthy suitor for his daughter, to which Brahma replies that time runs differently on each plain of existence and while the King was making his request many ages have passed on earth.
Early time-travel stories have much in common with this story, where the main character falls asleep (such as in Washington Irving’s 1819 story Rip Van Winkle) or visits a magical realm and when they awake or return they find that many years have passed. One early example is Urashima Tarō, an 8th century Japanese legend about a fisherman who rescues a turtle and as a reward is allowed to visit the Palace of the Dragon God under the sea. When he returns to his village three days later, he finds that three centuries have passed.
What nearly all of these early time-travel stories have in common is the idea that time can move faster, allowing the character to view or visit (or be stranded) in the future. One of the first examples of a time traveler going backwards in time is Mark Twain’s 1895 satire A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. But even then, the main character goes through time by a blow to the head.

Rise of the Machines
The first example of a character using a machine to travel through time is in a story by H.G. Wells, but it wasn’t in his 1895 novel The Time Machine. Seven years earlier, he wrote a serialized story called The Chronic Argonauts. The characters mention the different years they traveled to, but they don’t offer any detailed accounts of what happened on their adventures. Wells’ popular novel The Time Machine holds that distinction. The concept of a time machine remains popular to this day.

A Couple of Places to Tie A Boat
The main issue most time travel stories have to get around is the paradox. It is called the Grandfather Paradox, first proposed by science fiction writer René Barjavel in his 1943 book The Imprudent Traveller. Here’s how it works: “if one goes backwards in time and kills one of their ancestors before he had children, the traveller cannot exist and therefore cannot kill the ancestor.”

Time Travel novels come up with several different ways to avoid the Grandfather Paradox. One way is through the many-universe theory of quantum mechanics, which I briefly described when I examined Crichton’s Timeline.
Another way to deal with the Grandfather Paradox is through a Destruction Resolution. One of the most well known cases would be in the movie Back To The Future, where (Spoiler) Marty McFly starts to disappear because his mother fell in love with him instead of his father. Most stories that deal with a Destruction Resolution work to prevent it. In Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus, Orson Scott Card writes of a situation where a Destruction Resolution might be embraced. I generally enjoy most things Card writes, and this novel is no exception. It’s a great examination of the mistakes humans made in discovering the Americas, and a lovely fantasy of how to prevent it.
A final way to deal with the Grandfather Paradox is by strict adherence to the Novikov Principle, employed to great effect in The Time Traveler’s Wife, published in 2003 by Audrey Niffenegger. The Novikov self-consistency principle was developed in the mid-1980’s by Russian scientist Igor Novikov, and asserts that if an event exists that would give rise to a paradox, or to change the past in any way, then the probability of that even occurring is zero. What this means is that our history is a fixed timeline. Everything that happened did so either because the time-traveler failed or was never there. You can’t go back and stop the Titanic from sinking because it already sank. Science fiction author John Varley proposed an acceptable way to deal with that problem in his 1983 novel Millennium (which became the 1989 film of the same name), where passengers of a plane that was doomed to crash were saved by bringing them to the future and replacing them with copied duplicates to be found in the crash debris. Since there was no deviation from the fixed timeline, ie. a plane crashed and there were no survivors, there was no paradox.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this journey through Thyme. Give the books I mentioned a read, they are all great fun.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Sgt. Angle Reporting for Duty!

In just a few days, you maggots will be slugging yourselves down in front of your fancy television sets for a few hours to watch the NFL Kickoff. After that, your weekends the next few months will no doubt, like mine, be taken up with several hour spells in front of the same television, elbow deep in barbecue flavored potato skins, the frothy head of beer coating our already frazzled mustaches while the ol’ pigskin gets tossed and run around over 100 yards of pure green grass-tro-turf.

With the oncoming season already embedded in your calendars, I’d hope you have some time here and there to remember what makes football so great to watch, whether in reality, or in the fictional world blown big on the silver screen (silver screen would be an awesome name for a crazy good offensive play, wouldn’t it?). Below I give you some of the best of the best in Football Films.

There’s two kinds of football films, really, just as every cinematic genre can play two sides to the same tonal coin: the TEAM stories, (speaking of teams, how about the team of James Ninness and Jed Soriano? You can get to know them and their work better when you purchase Mythoi Book One: Birth here) and the REDEMPTIVE or INDIVIDUAL stories. Sometimes these types overlap, but most of the time you can pinpoint what kind of sports film you’re watching. For me, TEAM stories tend to evoke more participation on my part, as an INDIVIDUAL tale is more often than not a sort of biopic.

RUDY, for instance, is a REDEMPTIVE story — our main character carries the weight of the plot, against all odds as the weakling with a single dream. We’re not following a football tossed to and fro, characters weaving in and out of focus, and because it’s Notre-Freakin’-Dame, we don’t have to worry about the W-L percentage. What we’re more interested in is seeing an underdog simply get on the field, to go against all odds and just play, simply to fulfill his dream. Four out of Five Rifles.

THE EXPRESS is another REDEMPTION football story. The lead character, Ernie Davis, was the first black footballer to win the coveted Heisman Trophy. He also died before he could play in the NFL, and his success and good nature helped pave the way for integrating college football teams in the 1960s. The movie version of his life is labored most of the time, a cliche tale of “we know he’ll succeed and we’re watching what we expect to see.” The “conflicts” are based solely on race and little else — we’re watching Syracuse make a run for a championship, so the TEAM doesn’t matter as much. The story is all about Ernie changing the lives of the people around him, yes, including his teammates. But the success we want is not for the victory, but for the change to happen. Halftime speech here. Three out of Five Rifles.

VARSITY BLUES. Another ME over TEAM film, this time about a high school quarterback who unexpectedly takes the reins of leading his team away from the coach, played by a brilliant Jon Voight. We get a lot of the QB’s life outside of school, outside of the sport, and want him to stand up to his father, want him to take that leadership role that’s so important. Off the field, the other players don’t make too much of a dent. Their personalities don’t shine, and we’re again shown a movie about a dude, not about the team. Four out of Five Rifles.

Now this is not meant to imply that these “individual” football stories don’t work — they do, and usually quite well. But it’s important to know what kind of movie you like, what kind of movie you’re going to be viewing, and then what kind of movies you would recommend. Inspiration comes in all sizes, mostly from “individual” tales, but more often, from the stories about entire teams who learn to care more about each other than the victory that tends to always be out of reach.

THE REPLACEMENTS. A bit corny, and blessed cursed by the presence of Keanu Reeves, this late 90’s entry into the genre focused mainly on the team, the camaraderie of a band of kooky gents taking over during a pro-NFL strike. While we focus mainly on Keanu’s redemption, there is more screen time spent with the team than without. We are also handed plenty of scenes with head coach Gene Hackman, again emphasizing the team, the effects of decisions “on the guys.” Four out of Five Rifles.

NECESSARY ROUGHNESS. Oddly, this TEAM-focused movie also spends most of its’ screen time on its quarterback, an aging Scott Bakula, who has one year of eligibility left in college ball. But, like The Replacements, Roughness gives us a heavy dose of the coaches behind the scenes, and almost every scene plays around the team as a whole rather than just Bakula’s past mistakes. Three out of Five Rifles.

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS. I’ve shined on this film in prior posts (mainly the TV show), but it’s worth mentioning again and again. It’s a TEAM movie in the largest sense of the word — not a single player becomes the “focus” of the story, and even the coach is more of a presence than a focal point, so that by the end of it all, when the championship game is played and the players move on, we come to realize we’re watching more than a movie about a team, and much more than a movie about any one individual. We’re watching an American past time embodied and infused with life, a cultural moment in the history of sports and people. Five out of Five Rifles.

(You’ll notice that the clips above all contain speeches from the respective films. I’ve heard tell that the speech in Any Given Sunday is one of the best inspirational speeches in recent film history. Judge for yourself:

Got a favorite sports movie? A favorite football film? Give me your own briefing in the comments below.

You are dismissed!

Sgt. Angle

Well folks, a new Peter Pan show has hit the stage (I think this is about the 4th Peter Pan Stage Show I have heard of) and it looks nothing short of amazing.

Thanks to “theaterinla.com” for the scoop! Here’s what they had to say:

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The tale of Peter Pan has been adapted many times including the Walt Disney animated film and a Broadway musical. However, it was not until this 2009 production, presented by threesixty entertainment, that a production was performed in London’s Kensington Gardens, where Barrie was first inspired to create him and where the original statue of Peter Pan has stood since 1912. This 21st century Peter Pan mixes history and magic in equal measure to present a Peter Pan story for adults and children alike.

In Costa Mesa, tickets to see Peter Pan start are $30 to $70. Premium ticket packages are also available, and include admission to the performance, drink voucher, souvenir brochure, Peter Pan audio book and Peter Pan memorabilia. Tickets go sale to the general public on Sunday, July 18. They will be available at OCPAC.org, at the Center’s Box Office at 600 Town Center Drive in Costa Mesa or by calling 714–556-2787.

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This looks spectacular, nothing short of amazing.

What do you guys think? Will you buy a ticket today?

–Admiral Eo

Hey, kids! Welcome back to The Book Report. The Mythoi Book I: Birth Trade Paper-Back comes out this month (just in case you missed the official press release), and I strongly urge you to pick up a copy.

In a strange bit of cross-promotion, yours truly can be found acting in William Shakespeare’s The Tragedie of King Lear at Shakespeare Orange County this month. Of course, what that meant for me is for the past few weeks I’ve had to sit through the telling of this terrific, tragic tale just about every night, and so I needed something to read to lighten things up a bit.
What more appropriate way to do that than by giving Christopher Moore’s parody of King Lear, Fool (pub. 2009), a reread.

“A Fool and his money are soon popular“
For those unfamiliar with Shakespeare’s tragedy, allow me to recap:
The old King Lear of Britain is ready to retire and wants to pass along control of his kingdom to his heirs. In order to prevent future strife between the Dukes of Albany and Cornwall (each of whom are married Lear’s older daughters, Goneril and Regan), Lear decides to divide his kingdom into three parts, each portion going to a daughter. His trick, however, is that the size and value of each portion is determined by asking his daughters which of them loves him the most.
Goneril and Regan spew honey out of their mouths, but Lear’s youngest and favorite daughter, Cordelia, doesn’t play along. She says,

Why have my sisters husbands, if they say
They love you all? Haply, when I shall wed,
That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry
Half my love with him, half my care and duty:

Lear, in his pride, does not take this response well. He disowns Cordelia and divides her portion between Cornwall and Albany and gives them the keys to the kingdom, though he shall still “retain the name of king”. It soon becomes clear, however, that the honey coming from the mouths of Goneril and Regan mask the vitriol in their hearts. Lear soon finds himself rejected by his older daughters, turned out into a storm with a fool, a possible madman, and a knight in disguise as his only company. His heartbreak tugs at his sanity as the storm tugs at his health.
Cordelia returns with an army, looking to set the wrong things right, and finds her father wandering feverish and delirious. In typical tragic form, by the end of the play practically everyone ends up dead, and those who survive cautioning,

“The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.”

“It is a fool’s prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak.“
In Christopher Moore’s novel, the story of Lear is re-imagined, and told through the eyes of Lear’s Fool, named Pocket. The tale through Pocket’s eyes becomes what Publishers Weekly rightly calls “a buffet of tragedy, comedy, and medieval porn action.” Moore deviates from his source material a bit in order turn the tragedy into such a ribald comedy, changing the ending and borrowing heavily from a couple other Shakespeare plays in the process. But in addition to the utterly hilarious (and vulgar) wit coming from the fool, Moore cleverly imagines scenes to fill in certain gaps in Shakespeare’s play.
Too many details may spoil the fun (and there is a lot of fun to be had), but I will say the book worked wonderfully well at keeping me smiling by the end of each rehearsal. Shakespeare purists who don’t recognize parody as the sincerest form of flattery and people who don’t appreciate a good dick or fart joke will probably not enjoy the book that much. But for the rest of you, I encourage you to pick up the book and give it a read. It’s sure to tickle the whole way through, and I lost count of the moments when I burst out into audible laughter.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_