Movie and books

I’ve been feeling vaguely sick for the last few days, so I’ve been unmotivated to do just about anything… including blog.

Last night, a few of us went to see Beowulf. We saw it in 3D, which was sort of interesting. Overall, though, I found the CGified style of the thing distracting. The men looked significantly more real than the women (I suspect this was due to facial hair). Angela pointed out that the CG monsters stood out far less than they would have in a live-action movie. They did a decent job of imposing a coherent narrative on the story, but it still wasn’t incredibly deep or anything (not that I expected it to be). The movie got bonus points for having Crispin Glover in it. Crispin Glover is always worth bonus points in my book.

After Beowulf, I finished off the second novel of S.M. Stirling’s Emberverse series; the series focuses upon the time after The Change, when the technology of the modern world stops working. It is a nifty take on the post-apocalyptic genre. The books are generally well-written, but I do have a few complaints about them. Stirling is pretty clearly a gamer, by the way. The first book in the Emberverse series had more than a few rpg and D&D references.

I’m looking forward to book 4 of Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera series. The series isn’t super-innovative or anything (the overarching plot follows a classic pattern), but it is enjoyable and well-written. The world it is set in is pretty neat and it has characters that are easy to care about. I’d totally play in an RPG set in Alera. I wonder if one is in the works… I should check with the Evil Hat guys. There would be some trickiness with power-level, but I think I’ve figured out a way to handle that.

Also, apparently Gene Wolfe is coming out with a new novel that is some sort of retro-future pulp thing. That sounds really neat.