Reading, Watching

I haven't been doing too much reading (books) and watching (movies), but I have a bunch of quick roundups to throw your way.

Reading List:

Sandman Vol 1-4: I don't know why I only bought vol 1 & 3 many years ago, but now I have the first 4 and finished them all in 2 days. I love graphic novels and the illustration as well as story telling in these books is spot-on for my tastes. I wonder if I should buy 5-10 (or is it 11?) in one shot or reward myself once a month?

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo + The Girl who Played with Fire
It was a 2-for-1 month for me with these books. My book club picked the second book in this series for last month's read. I had missed vol#1 last year when I was on a long vacation (I forget when - might have been maternity). So I read them back to back. The first one in 3 days and the second in 5. Clearly I found the first one faster :) Fun read. I found more depth of human interaction in book-1 but it looked like it was a split vote among bookclubbers on which one was better. Now I have to wait till May 2010 for the third installment. Boo! I will pre-order it, of course!

True Blood / Sookie Stackedup
I attempted watching this series on Netflix and gave up. The horrible acting, Anna's lips, fake accents, Anna's lips, very ugly vampire teeth - everything put me off. I was informed by many people that the books were better, so I bought volume one of the series. From the moment I picked it up, I was tortured every minute by visions of Anna's lips, bad acting, greasy hair, dumb-as-a-brick Jason, and a myriad other failings of the series. I couldn't read it. Twilight may go down as my only true Vampire obsession. Although, I do have a bunch of Buffy DVD's I borrowed...

The Help & Waltz with Bashir (upcoming reads)
The Help is our current book club pick, and Waltz with Bashir is the book I wanted book club to pick. Yesterday I ordered both off Amazon. I know I can do more than one book a month, easy peasy.

Watching List:


It has been pretty slow on the movie watching front - you can't keep up with your pre-baby standards when you limit movie time to after the baby goes to bed.

Watchmen: We finally watched Watchmen. Rather, I saw parts of Watchmen. MrM and I started seeing it together a few days ago. He fell asleep and I watched for about 45 minutes before calling it a night. Monday night he started the movie again, mistakenly thinking I had seen most of it. So I only ended up watching the last hour or so. No problem, because I had read the book. The movie is fairly true to the novel except some creative changes in dialog. They changed "Robert Redford" to "Ronald Reagan" in the movie (last scene at newspaper office: "America would never vote for a cowboy"). Good job!

I liked that they stayed pretty close to the book (in the one hour I saw). I loved the casting of Rorschach. Dan/Nite Owl was also well cast and felt as much of a wuss in the movie as I thought of him in the book. Laurie.. Laurie, Laurie. She wasn't much of a character in the book, and I didn't like her casting. The actress's voice had no strength and she just looked like a silly girl with an extreme case of scissors-to-the-bangs. Someone with Jodie Foster's voice would have made me happy. When was the last time I found a female superhero cool? Mrs. Incredible (from the animation movie, yes) and Aeon Flux come to mind. Anyway, well made movie. Rorschach's jail scene was great, and the movie was as dark as you would want it to be. No other complaints. :)

Inglourious Basterds:
Dammit! I can't misspell the title correctly! I saw this movie at the Alamo recently (MrM was on baby duty because he knows I love my QT movies) and it was such a blast! Brad Pitt, despite his accent, made me laugh. In fact, there were a lot of scenes where I found myself amused, which is saying something in a violent Tarantino movie. I also found myself wondering if anybody would be laughing if the atrocities shown were being committed by the Nazis and not ON the Nazis. I guess not. The movie had me on board all the way till the last few seconds. The last swastika-etching scene should have been left on the editing table. A very fun romp for those of you who find movies like Pulp Fiction & Kill Bill to be fun romps.

What has the world been watching and reading?