Go see "Iron Man"!

I went to a preview screening at the George St Hoyts with CM, AM and NW and none of us could fault it. Slick, slick, slick, slick, slick, slick, slick. Superior effects to previous superhero adaptations, characters you'll actually believe in and care about (Robert Downey Jr is brilliant!), unforced humour, thumping soundtrack, the requisite Stan Lee cameo, battle scenes that don't drag, foreshadowing... By the way, the refit of the aforementioned multiplex is finally complete. It now houses a Timezone arcade, where I was surprised to see a videogame based on TV game show "Deal Or No Deal" that had buttons for those options and each of the numbered briefcases. But, as Peter David would say, I digress...go see "Iron Man"!


Reading at rest ('cos it's hefty and expensive):

* "The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier" (2008). Writer Alan Moore and artist Kevin O'Neill fast-forward their famous-literary-figures-interacting espionage from the Victorian setting of the two prior comic series to an alternate '50s Britain...sort of. The tome-within-a-tome of the title covers various earlier episodes relating to the so-called "Murray Group".


Reading in motion ('cos it's portable and cheap):

* "Doctor Who: Wooden Heart" (2007) by Martin Day. Doc Ten(nant) and Martha in a mystery in a village in a forest in a starship. And it's really very good. "W/H" is dedicated to noted "Who" author Craig Hinton who, according to Wikipedia, was discovered dead in his home in December 2006, aged only 42. Sad.


Cool souvenir from CM's latest Hawaiian jaunt:

Rum-flavoured pirate mints!


Clifford Stoll channels Wembley Fraggle:

Scientist/educator/eccentric CS is responsible for the non-fiction works "The Cuckoo's Egg" (1989; intriguing hacker hunt), "Silicon Snake Oil" (1995; admirable ode to offline virtues) and "High-Tech Heretic" (2000; can't comment, but I have it on order from Amazon). When PG tipped me off to the lectures available on TED, this was a treat - www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/237