We Bought a Zoo (2011)

Posted by Kurt

We Bought a Zoo, the new Cameron Crowe film, is like a deep-tissue massage for my soul.  It is shamelessly heartfelt, with no interest in being edgy or bringing in shocking plot twists.  There are no tricks or nasty villains.  It is just a story about a guy trying to restore his family with a little adventure, and it is dangerously close to perfect.  I've been accused of hating love, happiness, and fun, and I still alternated between happy tears and sad tears for almost two hours.

Mega-Python vs. Gatoroid

Posted by Matt


I love cheesy sci-fi monster movies. I love pop music. And I am prepared to tell you all about a battle royale pitting Debbie Gibson against Tiffany against a few CGI reptiles...Spoiler alert

Explosive Eighteen

Posted by Matt

Janet Evanovich writes a series of mystery novels about a Jersey girl who finds herself a job as a bounty hunter, using her charm to overcome her lack of any real talent at catching bad guys. Each book has a number in the title, and this is the eighteenth. On the one hand, the audience is built in - we've read seventeen of these adventures, the odds are we're still on board, even if she does phone this one in. But the book has its importance a little elevated. For one, this novel follows Evanovich's best cliffhanger yet, and for another, this is the last book published before Katherine Heigl attempts to embody lead character Stephanie Plum on the big screen this spring. I am pleased to report that the book is a success, with the mild annoyance of an abrupt ending. At the close of the last book, Evanovich teased a resolution to the series's love triangle - Stephanie was going on vacation with ONE of her suitors, and we weren't going to learn who until the next book. I was expecting this book to start by telling us who got that other ticket, and I thought we'd read about that couple solving a mystery in Hawaii instead of the usual Trenton haunts. Instead, the book opens with Stephanie sneaking back home, and for a hundred pages, the author drops clues about what happened without yet revealing. It was a great way to hold my attention, with pacing worthy of the best primetime dramas as they return from summer hiatus. The rest of the book was the usual enjoyable action, comedy, and romance. Reading it reminded me of how she described morning sex - satisfying and enjoyable, but not a marathon because everyone has something else to do that day. This woman has learned what works for this series, and I recommend new readers take a look at One For The Money. By the time you get to Explosive Eighteen, you'll be thanking me.

Break the Spell (2 of 2)

Posted by Kurt

I started my review of Daughtry's new album, Break the Spell, here.  This is the rest of the review, starting with the most embarrassing track on the album.

Break the Spell (1 of 2)

Posted by Kurt


I am a semi-secret fan of Daughtry.  I liked his sound on American Idol, I loved his self-titled debut album, and I basically liked his follow-up album, Leave This Town.  I’m aware that I lose any snob street cred by liking his music, but I can’t help myself.  When I noticed an opportunity to pre-order his third album, Break the Spell, on iTunes, I put it on my credit card without a second thought.  And while, at this point, you already know whether or not you like Daughtry and are interested in a predictable third album, so it’s kind of stupid to write a review.. I am that kind of stupid, so here we go.

420 Characters

Posted by Kurt

This beautiful collection of hyper-minimalist stories is simply stunning.  Lou Beach presents himself with a simple challenge - make an impact in a Facebook status update, which means writing 420 characters or fewer - and succeeds in roughly 160 different ways.  Each page of this collection is one status update, each standing independently but some tracing faint connections through the volume in a vaguely Spoon River Anthology kind of way.  Some are complete stories with a beginning, middle, and end, and some are completely surreal images that don’t have an obvious surface-level connection, but most are single rich images that suggest much larger stories.  I have been madly in love with minimalism since reading a Chuck Palahniuk essay about Amy Hempel (and then devouring each of her collections), and most of Beach’s work compares well with the best of Hempel’s creations.  Beach clearly understands exactly how to cultivate just the most evocative details of a scene, like a cowboy realizing that all of his lover’s letters have taken on the aroma of campfires, a child absorbing the warmth of a small wooden bridge while dropping pebbles into the stream below, or three lines of dialogue that suggest the overall shape of a passionate argument.  

Comics roundup 11/2/11

Posted by Matt

Mostly new business with the X-Men as the rest of the comic world shakes off that last crossover...