Once Upon a Time in America

So...fucking...dull. This movie runs THREE HOURS and FORTY MINUTES. If Leone had cut about TWO HOURS from it, maybe I might have watched all of it instead of giving up at the end of Disc One. EVERY time I'd start to get into the story of Noodles, Maxie and their crew of Jewish gangsters the story would flash forward. And then start playing sad, sad music. Gods, it was like an experiment in how to annoy me with a movie. How the genius behind the Man with No Name westerns made this pile of crap is beyond me...

My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding

An anthology collecting stories on 2 themes. Weddings and Modern Fantasy/Dark Fantasy/Urban Horror. Though at least one of the stories isn't set in a modern era. Edited by P.N. Elrod with stories by L.A. Banks, Jim Butcher, Rachel Caine, Elrod, Esther M. Friesner, Lori Handeland, Charlaine Harris, Sherrilyn Kenyon and Susan Krinrad. Not surprisingly I enjoyed the stories by the writers I already follow (Butcher, Elrod, Friesner and Harris) and disliked the ones by the other writers. Though I found the Harris story "Tacky" the weakest of the ones I liked. And "...Or Forever Hold Your Peace" almost manages to get me interested in Krinard's pseudo-Victorian Albion setting with its almost White Wolf world of Talents. On the other hand L.A. Banks' "Spellbound" story of curse slinging McCoys and Hatfields is almost offensive in its stereotypes and attempts at crafting "regional" dialects...

Since I got the book through Zooba, it only ran my 10 dollars. A decent price for an anthology where I like about half the stories. But I'd be hard pressed to recomend it to casual fans of the genre. For me it was worth it just to confirm my disinterest in several of the writers' regular series...

New York's newest hero

( Rocket Rhino! )

If we do end up playing MSH, I'll probably either run this guy or Gorilla X...