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I know what you’re thinking…

“man, he’s really gonna tear this movie a new one..”

LOL. Wrong.

I think the largest problem with the Catwoman movie was that it was made in the wrong decade. It should have been out during 1993. It would have done well. It’s cheese level was a lot more acceptable then.
And I’ll actually take this time to make another comment on another Superhero movie. Batman & Robin. Seriously? Catwoman is a far superior movie to Batman & Robin. It is extraordinarily hard to watch those movies and then go into Batman: Dark Knight. Staggering. With the new Watchmen movie coming up, a lot of Superhero movies are going to have that bar raised pretty high.
Another release right around the corner is Punisher: War Zone. The recent Punisher movie and most of it’s predecessors failed terribly… but now we have seen some masterpieces out of Marvel comics, so I’m hopeful.

To say I like audible.com would be an understatement. I started off my audible experience with The Children of Hurin. Unfortunately, Tolkien doesn’t make for good listening material while walking at night alongside my cities busiest boulevard, so I’ve taken to listening to Christopher Lee read this epic tale on lunch breaks and whatnot. As a replacement, however, the book iWoz written by Steve Wozniak is phenomenal. I’m a few chapters in and the book is great. The way it is written and read makes it a lot easier to turn up on the iPod and ignore the noise around me. If you have not read this book yet, I suggest getting your hands on either the book or the audiobook.

I just signed up for Audible.com Leo Laporte has talked about this long enough that I’m going to give it a try. audible.com/night will link you to a 14-day free trial w/ 1 free credit towards an audio book AND it will give Net@Night much deserved sponsor love.

The book that I decided to try first is The Children of Hurin, read by Christopher Lee.  This is the newest book pulled together from the unfinished writings of J.R.R. Tolkien.  Christopher Tolkien edited and pulled this work together.  It is a bestseller and a highly acclaimed book.  I own a copy, a very beautiful copy.  Unfortunately, I haven’t so much as opened the book due to time management issues.  I’ve always known I would read the book, and even now, have every intention of doing so.

What excites me about this audio book is not just the tale being read, but the person doing the reading.  Christopher Lee portrayed the character Saruman in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies.  You can imagine that this should be a very rewarding experience.

Once I’ve listened to the book, you count on a comment to this post giving it a yay or a nay.

Vampire Knight. Story and Art by Matsuri Hino. A Shojo Beat manga. One heck of a story so far. This is part one of a two-part review on this manga series. I’ll be doing part 2 after reading volume 3. This will give you a better idea of whether or not it’s worth it to get involved with the story.

My impression from the first volume is simple: go out and get this book now! It’s story and characters are developing fast and there is such a deep, deep story at the heart of this series that you won’t go wrong reading the first volume. The story revolves around a school, Cross Academy. There are two classes, a day class and a night class. The day class is human and the night class are vampires. Two of our main characters are humans whose families were taken from them at an early age by vampires. Yuki and Zero function as the “disciplinary committee”. Their job is to safeguard the secret that the night class are vampires. I haven’t, and won’t, give away anything that’s not on the back cover of the book.

With the formal introduction out of the way, this is a story that could evolve several directions. Characters are starting to form into factions and clash, not so much physically… yet. So far main characters are introduced and side characters are acknowledged. I haven’t run into the curse of 10 pages of history about a side character only to find that they are only a side character and not important to anything at all. There’s some feelings of love with our heroine towards two opposing people…. Like I said, it’s shaping up to be a great story. I can’t wait until next month when I can read another volume. Be looking for part 2 of this review in the future.

The final word on Vampire Knight: go out and buy Vol 1, you won’t regret it.

I started reading the Vector crossover series last night.  Luckily I got in on part 1 of the 12 part crossover comic book.  It starts with Knights of the Old Republic #25, published by Dark Horse Comics.  This is a comic series that is set in the Star Wars universe and follows the time-line featured in the hit game.

I’ve got to say, the cover grabbed my attention.  Darth Vader standing behind three other Jedi.  Definitely awesome cover art by Travis Charest, best known for Wild C.A.T.s (another awesome comic).  Penciled and Inked by a couple of GREAT artists that aren’t known for much other than their current work on Vector.  The story grabs you up in a torrent of action via John Jackson Miller (known for some Crimson Dynamo and Iron Man).  I’m not sure where we’re going with this story and can’t wait to let you know how it ends.

Final word:  Buy this comic.  It’s well worth it.  If you’re a serious Star Wars collector or fan, you must own it… even if you’re not into comics.