Mssv

I was so impressed with the first two minutes of Mass Effect, the new sci-fi RPG for the Xbox 360, that I had to play through it twice and then show everyone at work. While it’s essentially nothing but an extended cutscene, it’s a beautiful, well-directed, well-paced and astonishingly atmospheric introduction to the game. If [...]

Michael Chabon’s new novel, Gentlemen of the Road, was originally published as a fifteen-part serial in the New York Times Magazine, echoing the lurid and massively popular penny dreadfuls from the turn of the (twentieth) century. Its working title was originally ‘Jews with Swords’ which evokes all sorts of strange images, while the story itself [...]

A brief roundup of things I have watched, read and played over the Christmas period:
Ratatouille
Ratatouille is in contention for my ‘most rewatchable movie’ award. This has previously been the sole province of Master and Commander, another movie that doesn’t adhere to normal traditions of pacing and plotting. I’ve watched Ratatouille about four times now (at [...]

Unsentimental. That’s what the Mortal Engines Quartet is.
Children’s fiction - in particular, children’s fantasy - is so strong nowadays that it’s hardly necessary to say that a book is adventurous, imaginative or exhilarating. They’re all adventurous, they’re all imaginative, they’re all exhilarating. And they’re all plenty good enough for adults to read as well.
Amid this [...]

If you’ve seen Little Miss Sunshine, you’ll may remember the music. It was almost perfect for the movie - a wistful but sometimes happy mix of instrumental mariachi-esque and romantic music. It reminded me of a mix between Sufjan Stevens and Yann Tiersen, but in a good way (actually, Sufjan Stevens did have a couple [...]

The device that set off such a furore on this blog about The Death of Publishers and also resulted in a feature in the Bookseller has finally arrived in my hands. While I’ve only been using it for a week, I think it would be useful to share some first impressions of the Sony Reader [...]

One of my favourite authors is Ted Chiang. I’m not entirely sure what Ted does with his time, since over the course of seventeen years, he’s written fewer than a dozen short stories, the sum of which would easily fit into a typical novel. Of course, this has nothing to do with the quality of [...]

Along with selling a whole bunch of games, I’ve started addressing the problem of my overflowing bookshelves. Granted, I only have two bookshelves, but I’m not really at a stage in life now where I have the space to keep hundreds of books. A couple of weeks ago, it was getting so bad that I [...]

That’s what this wonderfully incisive Movie Preview Review says, anyway:

I’m going to see the movie - for the robots.

A couple of months ago, I went to see Yann Tiersen play at The Scala in London. Mr Tiersen is, of course, the person behind the tinkling, cheery and immensely popular music to Amelie and Goodbye Lenin.
Shortly before the gig, I discovered that he probably wouldn’t be playing just Amelie-style music, but instead he’d be [...]