So I've been reading a lot this past week, mostly for my MFA program and thus nothing you would call new or even terribly recent stuff. Great stuff, but nothing you haven't heard about a bunch of other places before. I'm more interested here in highlighting new and/or relatively unknown content, although I might write up the book I'm reading (and enjoying) now once I'm finished later this week.

But I did get to see The Mist on DVD, written and directed by Frank Darabont, based on Stephen King's novella. I'd listened to a really great audio version of this story many, many years ago, but all I remembered was people trapped in a grocery store by some creepy mist with crazy monsters in it. As it turns out, that's about all there is to remember, but it's also enough. This is a really solid, fun, survivor/horror movie, with some cool monsters, some unusual and interesting character arcs, and an ending that some people probably hate but I really love (although you couldn't call it the feel good hit of the summer by any means). The special effects are OK. Apparently the Blu-Ray disk has a black and white version on it, which I think might actually be pretty cool. I don't know that I've ever seen black and white CGI monsters before, but maybe that would make them look a little more realistic. If you like monster movies, check this one out.

I also saw this announcement about doing a big budget movie version Huxley's Brave New World. I'm pretty excited about this one. It's great to see Ridley Scott doing sci-fi again of course, and I like the fact that Leonardo DiCaprio's behind it as well (read the article linked to to see why). I know a lot of people are anti-DiCaprio, but they're just being weird and reactionary, probably a hangover from the horrifying Titanic-phenom days last decades. The fact is, he gives good to great performances in good to great movies again and again, and usually takes on pretty interesting roles. I loved him in The Aviator for instance, and Blood Diamond is a really solid, entertaining-yet-thought-provoking flick.

I actually ready Brave New World in college as part of my science for non-scientists general education requirement class, Great Experiments In Biology. We read it as a way of examining some of the science, ethics, and morality issues that biology raises. I think it was a really useful way to approach science education, especially for all of us liberal arts majors, and I enjoyed the book a lot. We then had to write papers about future technologies that looked like they might be controversial in some way. I picked nanotechnology, which was nowhere near the household word it is now back in 1992 when I was in the class. I think I'll try and find time to re-read the book this year in anticipation of the film.

Microsoft has announced that the X-Box Live service is going to start creating original content. I think this is a great idea myself. The more ways we have for getting original content into people's homes, the better as far as I'm concerned. They've signed on with a mixed bag of creative heads for this project, including the awful human beings responsible for those cheap, stupid, insulting "parody" movies like Meet The Spartans. That's not a good sign. I guess Microsoft looked at how much money those pics make compared to how cheap they are to produce and said "Yes please, more of that." And I wouldn't be surprised at all to learn that there's some marketing study that shows a high overlap between the mouthbreathing teens who see those movies and the core users of X-Box Live. Still, we shouldn't encourage this kind of thing.

On the other hand, we should encourage people like Penn of Penn & Teller (actually, encourage Teller too, they're both great). I used to love listening to his daily radio show (or rather, the podcast of it), and was really sad when it went off the air. I agree with Penn on about 85% of what he says, which is pretty good given how contrarian I generally am. But then, so is Penn. And even the stuff I don't agree with him on (mostly his love of Ayn Rand and some of his libertarian beliefs that stem from it), I can at least admire his intellectual honesty and thoughtfulness about. So I'm super pleased he's got a semi-regular video cast that he does. Now, 5 minute blocks of Penn aren't really all I'm looking for - I love to hear him go on and on and on. However, this is all we've got, and so I'll take it. Plus if you're a Dancing With The Stars fan (which I'm not), you'll find out a lot about his experiences on the show.

Finally I came across these pics from the abandoned Chinese Government sponsored theme park in Orlando, Splendid China. I visited the park with my brother well over a decade ago when I was doing research for my very first book Dark Kingdom of Jade. The majority of the park was elaborate miniatures of various famous sites from all around China. They also had performers and stage shows and stuff. I still remember vividly the very cool quick-mask-change street performer guy. I'm not surprised it failed - there were no rides, and it was really hot - it needed to either have most of the complicated dioramas inside or at least add in a lot more shade. This is Florida after all. Now it's all but gone, just some eerie abandoned miniature ruins left. Creepy and cool.