Stuff We Like This Week: August 21 Edition

Stuff We Like This Week: August 21 Edition

Aug 21

undone

In an effort to combat our occasional…okay, okay, near-constant negativity, we give you a regular feature full of nothing but love — Stuff We Like This Week. Appearing every Friday, SWLTW will recap the things that have set our little nerdly hearts aflame within the past seven days.

Sarah: One of my favorite urban fantasy things going right now is Rachel Caine‘s Weather Warden series. The writing latches onto your brain and glues your eyeballs to the page and you are pretty much incapable of doing anything until you’ve finished every single book. Those stories focus on Weather Warden Joanne Baldwin, her (delicious) Djinn lover David, and various movers and shakers connected to our planet’s most primal forces of nature. Caine’s newest series, Outcast Season, is a spin-off set in the same world featuring a new character, Cassiel, a once-powerful Djinn who is cast out and forced to live as a (shudder) human. I picked up the first book, Undone, this week. And I was a little nervous going in, cause I dunno, what if the ancillary Weather Wardening just made me want more of Joanne and David?

I shouldn’t have worried. Like, at all.

Cassiel is an awesome new persona with a voice completely different from Joanne’s, yet just as distinctive. She’s a little snotty, a little cold, a little…Spockian. And she’s just getting a handle on how humans act and react, which makes for some great story points. I also love how Caine uses this new character and storyline to fully explore another corner of the universe and the shifting power dynamics she’s created — the story takes us to an intriguingly dark place, one I didn’t expect.

Word of warning: like the Weather Warden books, this one ends on a cliffhanger of sorts, meaning I’ll be biting my nails off until the sequel comes out. Ow.

Matt: Ya know what I liked this week? The Avatar teaser.

Yeah, I said it. I enjoyed the Avatar teaser. Shocking, I know, what with the near-universal disdain, indifference, and snark directed at a perfectly intriguing glimpse into one of the year’s biggest flicks.

I thought it looked neat. The imagery is intoxicating, like covers from old pulp sci-fi novels come to life. The colors are pretty astounding. Even on a small screen and in 2D, the shots had a sharpness to them that hints at the immersive potential of the 3D technology.

I get that the movie is a huge hype target for geeks, and that most geeks react pretty negatively to hype, more ready to condemn than embrace what has aggressively been sold in their direction. I also know that prejudgment is a critical component of all geek communication; I do it all the time. So it was no surprise when the knives got sharpened pretty quickly and within moments of the link’s appearance, it was all “Ferngully” and “PS3 cut scene” and hardy-har-har.

But seriously, come ON. It’s not that I think the trailer makes the film seem as revolutionary as Cameron seems to suggest it will be, or that I’ve guzzled the Kool-Aid and will start camping out after the preview footage tonight to get my tickets in December. I just believe that what we saw is a tantalizing glimpse with a ton of potential, and that if it didn’t meet your lofty expectations or if you were prepared to hate it because you hate marketing for some strange reason, then sorry, but you’re kind of an idiot.

It’s a teaser. Critical component there: TEASE. I’m teased. I’m interested. Give me more.

Jeff: I can’t remember if I’ve talked about this before, but I love going to the movies.  Not watching movies – though I love that, too – but the physical act of going to the theater to watch one.   And it doesn’t matter whether I’m going to a huge 20-screen art deco monstrosity movie palace like my local Cinemark or a small, artsy theater like an IFC theater or Wilkes-Barre’s Kirby Center venue.  Hell, I’ll even take a what’s-that-on-the-floor, run-down, basically-only-shows-Rocky-Horror-once-a-month theater.  I have different romances with them all. Remember how excited they got about the fucking movies in Annie?  That’s me, except I don’t dance.

I went to the movies twice so far this week (District 9 and 500 Days of Summer, both of which were great), and I’ll be going again tonight for Inglorious Basterds.  No matter how good or bad a movie is, though, it’s the giant screen and the communal viewing experience that can never be duplicated at home.  The scary movie buff in me loves hearing the audience shout at the screen or shriek at a jumping cat.  Seeing The Hangover in a packed theater meant that I ended up laughing nearly constantly when, as much as I enjoyed the movie, I would probably barely have tittered if I were watching it alone. Laughter is valuable.  Really, the examples are innumerable.  People look at me strange when I say that I go to the movies once a week, and they look at me even stranger when they find out I usually go alone. Whatevs.

The other thing I like?  Advice.  You may have heard that I’m going to be writing a regular advice column here, starting next Tuesday. It’s called Nerdly Advice, and I’m putting out the call again for questions.  Email them to nerdlyadvice@gmail.com – ask whatever you want, but the nerdier, the better.

Chris: I like Imperial Hobbies!

Situated out in Richmond, BC – a short 20 minutes drive from my office – Imperial is a big hybrid store, carrying everything you need for boardgaming, models, table-top gaming, miniatures, card card games, comics, and other assorted nerdery. Every year they hold a couple of customer appreciation sales, and I scored pretty big;

– Two of the Paul Grist Kane TPBs I got for a buck each, making them the finds of the day, but I got a pile of TPBs on top of that as well. Squadron Supreme (the original series), Tom Strong, Invisibles, Batman and the Outsiders, and Astro City.
Humans!!! and Martians!!! to join my massive collection of Zombies!!!
– 10 pots of miniature paints and a brush.
– Marvel Zombies mini-mate 2-pack with Black Panther and Iron Man, to go with my big 5 pack of marvel zombies.

I also won a Dark Horse/Buffy book bag, because in a store filled with people who do not know what Donald Duck’s middle name is, the iPhoned man is king.

And how much do you figure I paid for all that? You’re very, very wrong. At a minimum 25% off everything in the store, I made out like a bandito!

humanscover

3 comments

  1. Thea

    Sarah – Rachel Caine’s Weather Warden books are among my top 3 all time fave Urban Fantasy series’. And I completely and wholeheartedly agree with you re: UNDONE. Cassiel is completely different from Joanne, but in a very good way. I need to get CAPE STORM now. Now, goddammit NOW!

  2. Don’t lie Jeff… I’ve seen you dancing through the lobby of the Wilkes-Barre RC-14!

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