This has always been my view...

http://twitpic.com/9wav52

featured from ebookville, all for a preposterous $2.99 each:

The Select - my first medical thriller (actually a medical school thriller) - it earned me the highest advance of my career

Implant - I never saw Dr. Lathram as a bad guy, just a guy who does bad things for a good reason (at least that's the way he sees it)

Deep as the Marrow - ostensibly a medical thriller, but really about calling off the War on Drugs, and all the ruthless people who want to keep it going (and I don't mean the religious right).

Sorry if this question's been asked before--I looked through the last four or five pages of entertainment threads and didn't see one. Anyway, what 5 albums would you absolutely have to have if you were forced to choose? Please write a brief comment about what you love about each disc if the muse strikes you.

1. LOW by David Bowie

I love Bowie's music in all it's chameleon-like phases. Low is where he really stopped caring about what his audience would expect and let his creativity and desire to experiment reign. The music still seems alien and futuristic even though it was released in 1977. My favorite cuts are probably the somber mostly-instrumentals like Warszawa, Art Decade, Subterraneans, etc.

2. A[B][I]NOTHER GREEN WORLD [/B]by Brian Eno

[/I]Low couldn't have been Low without Eno's creative contributions, and this record, the third solo disc from the ex-Synth player and all-around creative genius from Roxy Music shows another side to the ex-Glam Rocker. Ethereal, meditative and ambient instrumentals peppered with quirky and wonderfully bizarre vocal cuts. Released in 1975. My two favorite cuts are The Big Ship and Becalmed.

3. STRANDED by Roxy Music

This was the third Roxy Music album, and the first without Brian Eno. Bryan Ferry is one of my all-time favorite vocalists and songwriters. The songs on this album are among the group's best. I'd say this is Ferry's masterpiece. Released in 1973. My favorite cuts are Mother of Pearl, Just Like You, and A Song for Europe.

4. THE MICK KARN COLLECTOR'S EDITION by Mick Karn

This CD offers a sample of my all-time favorite bassist and an incredible composer. Mick Karn started out as bassist for the band Japan, which also introduced David Sylvian to the world, but Mick's compositions really shine when he started his solo career. His compositions are so funky and mysterious. This CD culls work from the early-mid 90's and is probably the best primer for anyone interested in hearing the most imaginative bassist in the world. Mick sadly passed away in 2011. This record was released in 1997. My favorite cuts are Bestial Cluster, Drawings We Have Lived, and There Was Not Anything But Nothing.

5. BLACK MARKET by Weather Report

I couldn't end the list without including one Jazz Fusion CD. I really love old school Fusion. Weather Report was one of the premeire Fusion outfits and probably best known for their composition Birdland, which was later covered by The Manhattan Transfer, but their best album, IMHO, is Black Market. Gibraltar alone is worth the price of the CD. This album is also the first Weather Report disc to feature Jaco Pastorius, a total bass monster. Released in 1976. My favorite cuts are Gibraltar, Black Market and Cannon Ball.

Anyone planning on seeing this? The previews look silly, but fun and the fact that it has an R Rating is appealing.

Toni, can you fix the spelling error in the thread title? Thanks, ma'am. You're the best LOL

As stoked as I was over the past year for Prometheus to come out, upon actually seeing it I felt like I was duped.

This is not to say that the story wasn't incredible, that it wasn't brilliantly directed by Ridley Scott and that it held not entertainment value whatsoever. Because it did, on all counts.

On the surface, Prometheus tells the story of a crew of scientists who discover a series of cave paintings that span millenia and continents, but each painting tells the same story. A story of giant men pointing to a far away galaxy. [SPOILER]It turns out the paintings are a map and an invitation to come and see where the genesis of man began.[/SPOILER]

So a team of scientists, funded by a private corporation (cue social commentary), head off to the distant planet and discover, upon getting there, that things are not what they seem and that something far more nefarious is at play than what they expected.

The rest of the film plays out in Scotts signature slow-burn fashion, culminating in a visceral descent into chaos and madness.

Where the film ultimately lets the viewer down is in the "is it or isn't it" an "ALIEN" prequel.

Even after watching the film, the answer is not quite clear.

Yes, it does take place in the ALIEN universe,[SPOILER] the crew lands on the very planet where Lt. Ripley and the crew of the Nostromo would eventually land, and[/SPOILER] there are hints of Xenomorph DNA spread throughout the screenplay.

But in the end, it seems like the script was never intended to be an "ALIEN" film in any form or fashion and that bits and pieces were tweaked to fit into the universe. Replace any sinister corporation with Weyland Enterprises, make any race of intelligent beings a "Space Jockey", have any random planet changed to an LV planet.

So in the end we are left with a stand-alone film with some "ALIEN" DNA peppered throughout.

The cast is exceptional, even the scenery chewing Charlize Theron manages to make a cold and calculating corporate drone seem more human. And speaking of seeming more human, there is of course the ever-present synthetic life form, this time named David and played with a dissociative disorder type personality by Michael Fassbender. He is clearly an android programmed to do one thing while harboring an almost human desire to do the opposite. Help or harm is the morality play he faces.

Noomi Rapace fills the shoes of the universe's strong female character who will undoubtedly become the next Lt. Ripley as she faces off against unforseen threats. Just as Ripley progressed from sure but timid to fight-for-your-life hero in the span of "ALIEN" so does Rapace in "Prometheus" including a arm rest clenching scene that defines the length the character will go in order to survive.

The one thing that is missing from this film is the quiet and unsettling moments that made "ALIEN" so damn scary. Say what you want, but "ALIEN" was a horror movie in space, it was not a sci-fi film. There was a sense of dread coupled with the fact that the crew was isolated and trapped in a ship adrift in space with something that wanted them dead.

"Prometheus" has expansive open sets, we are never left feeling that they don't have the opportunity to survive.

Clearly, there were two forces working on one script. Ridley Scott who wanted to return to his sci-fi roots and a studio/financier who saw an opportunity to relaunch a franchise. The end result is sort of a cop out as evidenced by a pathetic attempt to answer the "Is it or isn't it" question. In doing so they answer it definitively but alter the source material ever so slightly.

Still, "Prometheus" is a tense thriller and Ridley Scott shows that he can still deliver the sci-fi goods.

In the end, the film leaves us with unanswered questions and the start of a new franchise.

Kristen Stewart cannot act. I can see why she continued to have a job after the first Twilight movie was released - it'd be a little difficult to fire a lead actress in a movie series and bring in someone new. I question why they cast her in the first place, though. Why in the world did she get another acting job??

I went into the movie expecting a bad job from her so I wasn't disappointed in that respect.

Something seemed to be missing from this movie. I grew restless. It also seemed to me that some of the ideas were ripped from other movies. During the movie, I thought of Princess Bride (even asked a friend when we would see a ROUS), Excalibur, and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. It seemed like the movie went overboard with hyping Snow White's purity and innocence.

Theron pulled off the wicked stepmother well enough. Hemsworth is pretty but not a strong actor. As long as he sticks to the pretty boy action roles, he'll do fine.

I'd give the movie a "meh".

I just heard that Ray Bradbury died at age 91. He meant a lot to me. Not because I write like Ray Bradbury—I couldn't if I tried. But I became a horror writer because of Ray Bradbury. His “The October Game” is a masterpiece of subtly growing menace, and one of the most perfectly focused short stories ever written, as effective today as it was when it appeared in Weird Tales.


I discovered it on a summer night in Hitchcock's 13 More Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do on TV. I consider reading “The October Game” one of the pivotal moments in my life. Just thirteen at the time, I found the last line ("Then... some idiot turned on the lights.") confusing. I sat there, book in hand, puzzled, wondering at that crazy closing sentence. Why on earth—?


BLAM!


It hit me. I got it. And it blew me away, utterly and completely. Left me gasping. Lowered the temperature of the room by 20 degrees. And made me decide that someday, some way, I would write a story that would do unto others what this one had done unto me. I’m still trying.


Later on, Ray sort of disowned “The October Game.” I’ll bet he still appreciated the finesse of his younger self’s technique, but I think the subject matter appalled the older Ray. But the lesson this story pounds home is how less can be so much more. The oblique descriptions in the dark throughout the “game” are never visually realized by the author. The reader is left to construct them after the lights come on.


One of the wonderful things about writing fantastic fiction is the collegial atmosphere. You get to meet the heroes of your youth. I met Ray years ago. We corresponded. He started sending me his Christmas poems. I remember standing there December after December, agog that I was holding an original poem by Ray Bradbury. Sent to me. Me…on Ray Bradbury’s Christmas list. Me…on Ray freaking Bradbury’s Christmas list. Me…


Good bye, Ray. I know you're on Mars. Watch out for the rover.

Actually, I didn't realize he was still living. I remember reading Dandelion Wine and loving it as a kid. I think that's where I got the idea that summer required certain shoes (white keds). Link

I saw Moonrise Kingdom a couple of nights ago. It's quirky but kind of sweet and definitely worth seeing. There are some funny moments, but it's not a straight up comedy. It's a little hard to explain so I'll just let IMDB do it for me.

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