Posts filed in Impressions

First impressions of stuff, often put straight to paper (screen) just as I think of it, with few cognitive estimations of quality or relevance.

Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees

1926.
273 pages.
Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks.
Foreword by Neil Gaiman.
Where the rivers Dapple and Dawl converge is situated the small country port of Lud-in-the-Mist, capital of the free state of Dorimare. From here, the burghers send their trading ships out into the world, bringing back wealth to the upper strata of Dorimarite society. But Lud and Dorimare has [...]

Swords and Deviltry by Fritz Leiber

(If this isn’t my best review, please bear over with me; it’s been over two months since I read this book.)
2001 (1970, 1962, 1970).
165 pages.
“Induction” (2 pages)
“The Snow Women” (74 pages)
“The Unholy Grail” (27 pages)
“Ill Met in Lankhmar” (62 pages)
Swords and Deviltry is the first collection of short stories in the Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks series’ [...]

I don’t want Bendis to ever go away!

So, I’ve been reading Ultimate Spider-Man lately (bye-bye, decent exam-period meals), and at first I thought it would be boring to read a superhero comic with only one superhero. I imagined it would be far less interesting than the more group-oriented superhero comics I’ve read before, like Astonishing and Ultimate X-Men and The Ultimates, as [...]

A Plague! A Plague on Our Houses!

In my Last.fm shoutbox, I was recently asked by one of my readers to post more frequently in my blog, and seeing as your whim is my law, I bring you this: an essay of sorts about the last topic you’d expected me to write about!
One of the things you might not know [...]

The definition of preaching to the choir

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Seriously, I don’t know why these people bother. I mean, I agree with much of what the guy said, but jeez, does he honestly believe he is going to win many religious people over by antagonising them? Is this rational behaviour?
And what’s up with the islamophobia of these prominent atheists?
(On a concluding note, I’d like [...]

Doctor Who, “season 2″ (Tennant’s first)

So. How long did that take me? Seven months, you say? Man, I’m slow.
I guess I ought to write a kind of review of this, but the truth is, I don’t dare. It’s simply been too long since I watched the first four or five episodes, so I’ll limit myself to mentioning a few of [...]

I’m concerned for my university

I had my fifth and final exam for the term today, and unfortunately, I thought it was just like the four previous ones.
You see, based on the curriculi and the lectures in the courses I’ve been taking this fall, I’ve been expecting to be satisfied with a straight Cs. Global English had a lot of [...]

w00t!

Finally! Almost two years since I bought and started playing it, and some five or six years since the game’s release, I finally finished Neverwinter Nights!
I was close about half a year ago, too, when I had this rather nice Half-Orc Paladin going for me, but unfortunately, he proved to be no match for the [...]

Rip it apart and start again

One of the many reasons to look forward to Ripper.
As for Brian K. Vaughn’s (first, but hopefully not last) run of Buffy the Vampire Slayer “Season 8″ comics, the best compliment I can give is that I hardly noticed — if indeed I did notice at all, which is doubtful — that this wasn’t written [...]

Concerning music and laziness…

I used to like Minor Majority. I considered them to be one of my favourite Norwegian bands of all time, and there were few things in the world that could soothe me and calm my nerves more effectively than the first couple of chords of “Think I’m Up For You And I”. And the album [...]

Veronica Mars, season 3 ep. 9…

Spoilers inside.

Angel: After the Fall

This one took me somewhat by surprise. I’d heard that it was scheduled for release on 29 November, and then, last Thursday, Loki exclaims at me that this was some seriously good stuff. I, naturally, become flabbergasted, run home from downtown Trondheim (I was shopping for Christmas and November-Me presents when I got his message), [...]

Concerning Documentaries

I just watched an Australian documentary about Mullah Krekar (whose real name is Najmuddin Faraj Ahmad), one of the founders of the militant, Kurdish, Islamist organization Ansar al Islam, and an asylum seeker in Norway. The guy whom the Americans tried to use to link Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden a couple of years [...]

2007-11-13 — Quote of the Day

“It was in midsummer, when the alchemy of nature transmutes the sylvan landscape to one vivid and almost homogenous mass of green; when the senses are well-nigh intoxicated with the surging seas of moist verdure and the subtly indefinable odors of the soil and the vegetation. In such surroundings the mind loses its perspective; time [...]

Deadwood, season 1

Incredible.
At times I thought it lacked a bit more obvious season plot arc, and I’d liked to see Bullock being more active, rather than just reactive, but those are just about the only objections I have to the show.
Amazing setting, mindblowing characters, spiffy dialogue, and a delightfully rancid humour. One of the best shows I’ve [...]

Moonlight, eps. 1 and 2

It’s as good as the first couple of episodes of Angel, possibly better, with some interesting characters (Jason Dohring’s Josef Konstantin’s a favourite), a sound mythology (excepting a bit of inconsistency what concerns shadows and reflections and the like), and a few moral semi-ambiguities. It’s more pure noir, though, and the dialogue isn’t as sharp [...]

Bionic Woman — another first impression

This series has gotten a bit of hype in SFX in the last months, so I’d thought I’d give it a go. And the pilot looked good. Here’s what I thought of it.
Jaime Sommers is a college drop-out, who’s working in a bar and dating Will Anthros, a surgeon-professor-guy-thing. One night after a date, the [...]

Journeyman — a first impression

I caught the first episode of this show the other day, as one of my flat-mates recommended it to me, and he usually has top-drawer tastes. He might be onto something this time, too, although I remain sceptical.
Because basically, this reminds me of a rip-off of the show “Early Edition”, only instead of getting the [...]

Movies Galore: A Summary

It’s nearly two months since my last movie review — a review, I might add, where I was unreasonably hard on the reviewed movie, as the fact that I’m in a foul mood shouldn’t really count against it. Anyway, since then I’ve watched a lot of movies: excellent movies, great movies, good movies, mediocre movies, [...]

Doctor Who 2006 2×03 School Reunion

Tony Head as a reptile-bat alien disguised as a headmaster.
Awesome.

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