What Rowling doesn’t have going for her: >> Solid grasp of punctuation (grrrrrr) >> Strong pacing >> Economy >> Any idea that names precede character development >> Great originality What she does: >> Poster child for “show, don’t tell,” sometimes ad nauseum >> Fundamental conflicts, both good v. evil and child v. adult >> Characters …

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Over on Making Light, there’s a thread about Entertainment Weekly‘s list of the top 25 SF movies and TV shows from the last 25 years. Stargate SG-1 is not only not on EW’s list, it isn’t recommended in the 233 comments prior to mine at Making Light. Torchwood (blegh) was listed, but SG-1 wasn’t. That …

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I’ve written here about a movie and music experiences that have disappointed me. I’ll do it again, because it helps me understand where the artist/audience contract broke down. I don’t want to repeat the mistakes myself. However, when something makes me really happy, I want to share that, too. I’ve picked up two albums in …

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I went to see a bunch of very good musicians on Saturday. It’s a band I’ve liked for a long time, playing material I love, and I was deeply disappointed. Okay, so some of it may have been due to the car breaking down in the middle of the street earlier that day, or a …

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Eh. It isn’t exactly a bad movie, but it is a remarkable exercise in not trusting your story or your audience. Just as less is sometimes more, sometimes more is crap. We were in a theater packed full of people who were staying up past their (well, my) bedtimes to see the movie on opening …

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