Today’s crop of archive fun

Three more! I seem to be doing this in threes. I’m not sure if that’s a good idea or a bad one. If I add one piece to this blog, it takes me so little time I always feel I should do more. If I get to three, it takes so much time it puts me off doing it regularly, but two is a nowhere number. What’s a brace of reviews in the infinite gabbletude of the internet? Three has mythic power.

This is all work avoidance, you understand.

Up fresh today, all from early 2009′s Death Ray 17:

The Taint and Other Novellas, by Brian Lumley. A collection of Cthulhu-mythos terror tales.

Joe Ahearne’s Apparitions, where a good priest tackles the church and the devil.

And Sam Raimi’s pretty poor Legend of the Seeker, an early attempt of epic fantasy at conquering TV, failing where Game of Thrones would one day succeed.

Interview, and a few reviews

I’ve been busy. Grim dark futures (where there is only war) and coffee table books dominate my life at the moment, so I’ve not put any archive posts up for a few weeks. But I must soldier on! Soon I will be cutting and pasting my bits of Death Ray 17 onto this very blog, after which there are only four issues to go before I’m done. Admittedly, there are sundry other pieces from earlier issues — like interviews with Terry Pratchett and Raymond E Feist — to commit to an eternity upon the web. Yeah, I’m sure you’re interested in those, but they’re massive and so take ages to format, that’s why they’re still in a folder on my hard drive. I promise I’ll get around to it. And don’t worry if you’ve a thing for my incisive commentary on ancient SF obscurities, once Death Ray is exhausted I’ve three years worth of SFX reviews, interviews and features to get on with.

Today we have:

A review of the beautiful but tedious live-action version of Mushishi.

Wildly crap Billy Zane SF-thriller Memory.

Top YA author Darren Shan’s adult horror novel Procession of the Dead.

A book on horror films called Horror Films.

And an interview with the lovely Jonathan Walker, who played Rankol in the SciFi Channel’s not-so-lovely 2007 version of Flash Gordon.

Monday, funday, right-wing robo-sexy

For you today:

A review of the first season of the somewhat right-wing but much under-valued TV show Jericho.

A review of the robot fetish apology book Love and Sex with Robots.

And a story-by-story breakdown of the anthology Solaris Book of Best New SF 2.

Three films dissected

Some reviews from Death Ray 12, all movies.

The Nines, a quirky metaphysical drama starring Ryan Reynolds.

The sadly inept Captain Eager. I often mistype this as “catpain”, which is kind of appropriate in this case.

US dreams-can-come-true schmaltz-fest, The Astronaut Farmer.

Reviews for you-s (and a feature)

I’ve been up to my eyeballs in book editing and proofing (not my own, other people’s) this last week. I’m having a wee break today before I edit the final title assigned me, and thereafter commence work on my next Black Library novel (nope, I can’t tell you what it is about). As I’ve not posted any archive material for a few days, here’s three for you from early 2008:

An extensive feature on TV show Ashes to Ashes, the follow-up to genre-crossing Life on Mars. Written as the first series was launched, most of the cast are interviewed here, as is the writer and producer. Check it out.

A review of one of the Sookie Stackhouse books, Definitely Dead.

And finally, a review of the BBC’s update of The Three Billy Goats Gruff, Billy Goat.

 

 

 

 

Why Aliens Versus Predator is terrible…

Ah, a good ranty review of the (almost) execrable AVP: Requiem. Just rereading it makes me mildly irritated. Funnily enough, this one wasn’t screened for the critics, and we had to resort to subterfuge to get a copy to review.

February of 2008 when Death Ray 11 was being written, the magazine wherefrom these pieces are plucked, must have been a splenetic month, for my review of Family Guy: Blue Harvest also seems quite damning. But then there’s New Zealand weresheep comedy Black Sheep, which I enjoyed a little more.

Ah, I remember why! None of us got paid for nearly three months, and our boss was very evasive about exactly why… A story for another time.

Reproduced in this post, for your convenience and the lessening of RSI risk, is the AVP review. Click on the links in the text for the others.

Archive, archive, archive…

A couple more for you. At this rate, my war with my Death Ray back issues will be over by Christmas.

So, here we have an interview with one of my favourite artists, Paul Bonner, and a review of his art collection book, Out of the Forests…

First Baneblade write-up

A favourable review of Baneblade from the Warseer forums.

Baneblade (Guy Haley).

Today’s Archive

Some how-to artbooks and that.

From Death Ray 09, a two fantasy artbooks. One of these is by Gary Spence Millidge, no less.

From Death Ray 10, Incredible Comics with Tom Nguyen.

Harry Potter…

I’m not overly fond of Harry Potter. I don’t dislike it, I just, well, nothing really. It’s all a bit boring. My mum loves it though, and as she was one of the people who introduced me to all this fantasy/SF malarkey, I suppose there has to be some merit to the books. Oh yeah, and the rest of the world’s population who adore the boy wizard — it’s about one in two of every human being who ever lived, right? They can’t all be wrong.

Er, it’s just me, isn’t it?

For today’s archive fun, here’s my review of the DVD release of the film of The Order of the Phoenix, from Death Ray 09.