Game du Jour

The amazing folks at PopCap Games have combined two things that Valerie loves: RPGs and Boggle. The offspring of this union is Bookworm Adventures, in which you apparently play some kind of worm that kills its opponents with its sesquipedalian antics. The only thing not exciting about this is the price. And of course, if you are logophobic, this is probably not the game for you.

Gone to Texas

The comic book series Preacher is being made into a TV series by HBO. Alas, the pilot is being written by the director responsible for Daredevil, and directed by the guy responsible for The Whole Ten Yards, so Liz and Valerie are finding it difficult to be excited. What happened to Kevin Smith directing?

Even so, this could be good. This should be good. Because Preacher is awesome. Liz and Valerie are going to check it out...but it's not going to make them get cable.

For now the speculation can begin about who will play the main characters. Valerie, as always, votes for Matthew McConaughey as Jesse.

Theme Park du Jour

Because Liz and Valerie are ninjas in training, they feel compelled to share news of a theme park set to be built in China. What kind of theme park, you ask? A Bruce Lee one, of course!

There isn't much information at the moment, but you can check out an article about it. Maybe Liz and Valerie will take a trip there someday.

Happy birthday, William!

Today is the birthday of William Blake, the creator of the lovely quote you see next to our logo. Liz and Valerie dearly love his poetry, partly thanks to Professor Freeman at UM, who is a Blake scholar. Some quotes from his Proverbs of Hell:

"What is now proved was once, only imagin'd."

"One thought fills immensity."

"Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd."

The one director... to rule them all!

Now that poor Pete Jackson has tossed his Hobbit directorship into the fiery chasm of Mount Doom, someone must rise to take his place. And that someone may be Sam Raimi.

Yes, you read that correctly. The maker of classic films such as Army of Darkness and Spider-Man may take it... though he does not know the way. Luckily for him (and everyone else), The Hobbit is decidedly less epic than Lord of the Rings so it should be much easier to adapt. Even so, it will probably be three hours long and cost $200 million to make, given Raimi's track record.

This is assuming that he agrees to take on the project, of course. Liz and Valerie figure that if it was indeed offered to him, he would be a colossal fool to pass on it. Only time will tell. As Boromir says, "It is a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing."

What's blue and white and coming soon in CG?

While the title of this post may sound like a setup for a bad joke, alas... it is. In a manner of speaking, of course.

Because of Hollywood's perpetual creative drought, yet another producer has decided that it would be really great to remake an old favorite into a bad movie. And so he spun the Wheel of Cartoons from the Eighties and the winner was... The Smurfs!

Liz and Valerie can only hope that this is laid to rest in that smoky furnace known as production hell, but one can never be sure. The details are still very sketchy at this point, but producer Jordan Kerner is already talking about a trilogy that gets into the back story of that dastardly wizard Gargamel--no word on his cat, though.

Unconfirmed rumors via IMDB have John Lithgow and Julia Sweeney associated with the project. Liz and Valerie hope, for their sakes, that these rumors are false.

Quote du Jour

"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence."
--George Eliot, aka Mary Ann Evans

Save the Cheerleader, Save the World

Liz and Valerie now have a new site devoted entirely to Heroes! Check it out for synopses and commentary on the show. Yes, there will be spoilers, so don't visit if you aren't up to speed.

Saying Goodbye

Robert Altman died last night at the age of 81. Liz and Valerie cannot accurately express their sadness at his passing. Many of you will know this wonderful director for MASH, Nashville and other goodies. Liz and Valerie were lucky enough to see his last film A Prairie Home Companion in the theater. This is the guy that had done so many awesome films that the Academy had to throw him an Oscar at the last awards ceremony. Liz has been working on her Altman collection for some time now and is devastated by the idea that it is now a finite collection. Her personal favorites are Gosford Park and Kansas City. So sit down, watch Short Cuts or McCabe & Mrs. Miller, and have a drink for a legend.

Pete Jackson NOT directing Hobbit movie?

Liz and Valerie are aghast at the news that Peter Jackson has stated he will not be involved with the film version of The Hobbit until some kind of stupid lawsuit is settled. Lawyers are clearly to blame here.

But alas, there is allegedly a time issue involving limited rights availability, so if the movie doesn't get made now then it might not be made by New Line. MGM is saying that "the matter of Peter Jackson directing the Hobbit films is far from closed" but that sounds like the kind of thing they would say as fans across the world light torches and sharpen sickles. Liz and Valerie are keeping their fingers crossed that all will be well in the end.

When You Wanna Go Wii

Valerie would like to report that thanks to Nintendo not sucking like Sony, she is now the excited owner of a Wii, plus the new Legend of Zelda game and Red Steel. Her amazing husband procured this bounty for her, but in a Scroogelike turn is refusing to allow her to open anything until Christmas. If either Hannukah or Kwanzaa occur sooner than Christmas, Valerie may find religion and demand her ill-gotten gains immediately.

As soon as the system is opened, she will post a fanboy-like commentary of how much she loves everything. Meanwhile, you and she will have to wait.

Giving Thanks

Every year, the good old US of A celebrates how nice the Indians were to us, and how we rewarded them by infecting them with deadly diseases and taking their land. But who cares! It is all about the turkey.

Liz is living the high life with her family up in Georgia and North Carolina this fine holiday, while Valerie is staying behind in the unreasonably chilly Miami. Seriously, someone needs to have a talk with the weather down here, because Valerie had to turn the heater on and that is not kosher.

But over the next few days, both Liz and Valerie hope that everyone finds something to be thankful for, be it good food, good friends or good time off from work after that holiday wasteland which occurs between Labor Day and Thanksgiving.

Happy Turkey Day!

Start the bidding at one dollar

You may know that Liz and Valerie are working on novels for National Novel Writing Month. The inimitable Pam, wife of Joe Monks, is also working on a novel. She has far outstripped Liz and Valerie in terms of word count, and now she has a new plan to raise money for NaNo.

Place a bid on her eBay auction to get killed off in her novel. All proceeds will be donated to the lovely folks at NaNoWriMo to build libraries for children in Laos among other wonderful things. Do a good thing and get murdered! How cool is that?

Joke du Jour

Julius Caesar walks into a bar. "I'll have a martinus," he says. The bartender gives him a puzzled look and asks, "Don't you mean a 'martini'?"

"Look," Caesar retorts, "If I wanted a double, I'd have asked for it!"

Birthday du Jour

Neil Gaiman turns 46 today. Liz and Valerie are huge Sandman fans, but they also love his novels and films. Every year, they swear they are going to dress up as Death and Delirium for Halloween, but it never pans out. Maybe next year.

Quote du Jour

"I am constantly struck by the strangeness of reading works that seem addressed, personally and intimately, to me, and yet were written by people who crumbled to dust long ago." --Stephen Greenblatt

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's... SuperCon!

Liz and Valerie were at SuperCon in Hallandale Beach this weekend, working a table for the inimitable Joe Monks. What was initially viewed as a poor table location--immediately in front of a fountain, with the registration desk somehow magically behind it, causing numerous people to offer Liz and Valerie money in exchange for tickets that they didn't have--soon became a boon when Valerie explored the second floor of the hotel and learned the the magic of air conditioning was not making itself known there. Can you imagine eight hours in a small space filled with sweaty comic book and anime fans and NO AC? Neither can Liz and Valerie. Their hearts go out to the poor people on the second floor.

All in all, they had a good time chatting with Joe and Pam, watching cosplayers strut their stuff, and working on their novels. Some notable costumes included a banana, Princess Leia, the Crazy 88 plus The Bride and Elle Driver, a contingent of stormtroopers plus Darth Vader, Link with the Goron (i.e. red) tunic, Superman, Green Lantern and Poison Ivy. The winner of the costume contest was a guy dressed as a Ghostbuster; his costume was totally sweet, and there might have been a riot if he hadn't won.

And thus did Liz and Valerie spend their weekend, which ended with breakfast for dinner; Liz had biscuits and gravy, Valerie had a cheese omelet. This is vital information, rest assured. And now that the excitement is over, they return to their daily lives as mild-mannered office workers who secretly fight crime in their underwear at night. Or maybe just watch Heroes on NBC.

Dragon Tiger Love

Donnie Yen is so awesome. Loyal Candle readers will know of Liz's love for the man, and will also remember Liz and Valerie's excitement for the release of Dragon Tiger Gate. Well, last night, thanks to Austin, Liz and Val were finally able to watch this manga-based, eye-candy filled, kick-ass action extravaganza. And it was just as awesome as they had hoped.

In case you don't remember, this film stars Donnie Yen, Nicholas Tse, and Shawn Yue--all of them with awesome hair. Also, Liz and Val were happy to see Wah Yuen (Kung Fu Hustle, Kung Fu Mahjong), this time in a serious role. The plot is lacking in substance (no one's really sure why the main bad guy is so, well, bad) and the characterization is perhaps a little trite, but that's not what this film is about. It's about Donnie Yen's action choreography.

And what action it is. There are so many cool kicks that they have to show some of them again from a different angle. Donnie even gave a shout-out to Thai kickboxing lovers with some wicked knee-to-the-face moves.

And while this could be written off as just another action movie, one has to notice the beautiful composition of the scenes. The cinematography was really good, as was the coloring. In particular, the use of overhead shots and some of the wipes were right out of a comic book, which was very cool.

Liz really wants to own this, but perhaps will wait awhile, so as not to watch it every day. (Don't worry. One day, she will have the complete Donnie Yen collection - yes, even Blade II.)

So, even if you don't have the same caliber of love for Donnie and Nic, check it out for the action. You won't be disappointed.

Dearly Departed

Liz and Valerie saw The Departed several weeks ago after many moons of eager anticipation. Despite their desperate attempts to distance themselves from their love of Infernal Affairs, alas, they were unable to avoid comparing Scorsese's final product to the inimitable original.

There was a lot to like about the film. Leonardo DiCaprio's mounting paranoia was convincingly executed, and the action sequences were deftly paced. Alec Baldwin's performance was enjoyable, as was MarkWahlberg's. And Liz is always happy to see David O'Hara in anything.

Unfortunately, there was also a lot that made Liz and Valerie cringe. Jack Nicholson was almost absurdly insane--in fact, during some of his scenes, the audience actually did laugh out loud. Matt Damon did his best, but alternating between a cocky half-grin and a furrowed-brow half-frown wasn't quite enough nuance for a main character. Martin Sheen was barely there, to the point that his character's fate is barely a blip on the radar when it should be a cataclysmic event. And the heavy-handed attempts at symbolism were painful to watch, including the final shot of the film, which made Liz and Valerie groan in unison.

One of the main problems in the film is the lack of empathy or sympathy with any of the characters. When stuff goes wrong, it's hard to care about anyone. Which is quite the opposite of the original; you care about everyone in Infernal Affairs--the good, the bad and even the minor, supporting characters. One person can be on screen for less than five minutes, but can break your heart in just that time. Only Leonardo Dicaprio's character in The Departed forces any feeling from the viewer, and even then it's not enough.

The difference between The Departed and Infernal Affairs may be a simple matter of culture and geography; the former film is decidedly"Hollywood," while the latter is firmly "Hong Kong." Where the latter is waltz, the former is big band. Burger versus steak, Picasso versus Pollock... the comparisons could go on forever.

Suffice it to say that Liz and Valerie definitely prefer the original. It's shorter, the pacing is better, the cinematography is better, the acting is WAY better, and the symbolism gets under your skin instead of punching you in the face. If you haven't seen the original, see The Departed first, or you'll probably be as disappointed as Liz andValerie were.