Books
 | Flink by Doug TenNapel
 [5/10]
"While I found the art adequate, I found the themes clichéd and tired." |
 | Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions by Ben Mezrich
 [6/10]
"The movie does a good job at recreating the emotional tension that Mezrich develops in the book. So, unless you have a keen desire to know the 'true story,' I think that the movie does in two hours what it takes the book 300 pages to produce. The book gives details like the fact that team gambles all over the country and not just in Vegas, but the movie condenses the emotional states that Mezrich wanted to convey into a much more intense experience." |
 | Fablehaven: Grip of the Shadow Plague by Brandon Mull
 [7/10]
"The slow-moving first half of the book disappointed me, but I still find the Fablehaven books one of the most interesting and well-written adventure series around." |
 | Light before Day by Christopher Rice
[6/10]
"Still not great literature and probably won't last like his mother's works, but nevertheless the story pulls you along much better than the previous two novels and gives you a few satisfying thrills." |
 | So, You Wanna Be a Comic Book Artist?: How to Break into Comics! The Ultimate Gide for Kids by Philip Amara
[5/10]
"In reading So, You Wanna Be a Comic Book Artist?, I got that same feeling that I had heard all this advice before, and I realized that the advice you give to a writer or an illustrator probably applies to just about any creative endeavor." |
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Films
 | Mongol directed by Sergei Bodrov
[6/10]
"Director Bodrov clearly wants to paint a different picture of young Temudjin than most people have from from reading about the savage Gengis Kahn. Mongol paints a picture of a stubborn, religious man devoted to his wife and determined to create a great empire for the benefit of all Mongol people -- 'even if half of them have to die for it.'" |
 | Hot Fuzz directed by Edgar Wright
[7/10]
"I didn't find Hot Fuzz as riotously funny as Shaun of the Dead. Hot Fuzz has much more subtle humor, mostly irony created by the totally metropolitan Angel trying to fit in to a small town lifestyle. But Hot Fuzz has a much more intelligent plot than Shaun of the Dead." |
 | Wanted directed by Timur Bekmambetov
 [8/10]
"Over half of the film centers on Wesley training to take his place in the guild of assassins. Wesley doesn't have much fun training, but the film moves the story along with a nice combination of explosions, rapid-fire gunfights, chase scenes, and the discovery of cool and interesting things about the weavers' heritage and skills. You don't get a lot of deep thought out of Wanted, but you do get a fun, adolescent romp filled with plenty of action." |
 | Kung Fu Panda directed by Mark Osborne
[6/10]
"Watching Kung Fu Panda, I came to the realization that animated martial arts just don't impress me. No one had to study for years in order to make the amazing moves demonstrated on the screen. Instead, the characters were just drawn that way." |
 | The Dirty Dozen directed by Robert Aldrich
[7/10]
"Compared to today's action genre, The Dirty Dozen doesn't have nearly as many scenes of intense action, but it does manage to entertain with it's fairly well composed plot and well integrated subplots." |
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