Yes yes yes. I went and saw this with my mom (who had only the haziest of recollections of the show), and we both got out of the movie feeling like Hammer's portrayal of Ilya was easily the show-stealer. His was the far more interesting character, and we both were a great deal more invested in him.

Movies: The Man From UNCLE was pretty fun (and funny). Armie Hammer steals the show, alongside Alicia Vikander. I have zero familiarity with the TV show, so I don't know how much license is taken, but…Guy Ritchie knows how to direct action scenes.

"2) The Wall comes tumbling down, the White Walkers do catastrophic damage, and whoever emerges on the Iron Throne has to deal with the fallout of their rampage."

Oh, man, I watched Crash in my sophomore college English class, right after it won the Oscar, as a way to examine racism. I attended when I was a little older, and so, when we watched the movie and my teacher asked "So what did everybody think?", I was brazen enough that my hand shot right up and ranted for a good 5…

They are good. They're just extremely difficult reads, and in some ways, they've been made even more difficult for me (ex: I like to read books by the chapter; guess what? The shortest chapter is like 35 pages. That's that plan shot). He uses a lot of different terms where a fantasy short-hand already exists (ie:…

That, and allllll of the names. Like, I still can't quite remember the difference between a Tiste Andii and a T'lan Imass (the latter are undead, the former are…night elves?).

Movies: I went and saw the new Mission Impossible and Inside Out this week. Both were really great. MI had some genuinely funny moments in the midst of the absolutely breathtaking action sequences, and I thoroughly enjoyed Rebecca McGuire, especially. Can't wait to see her in more stuff. Inside Out…hey, I didn't…

TV: I finished the first season of Twin Peaks, started the second. I can feel my brain slowly leaving me.

Went to G-fest, a Chicago-area Godzilla convention, with my brother. He's the Godzilla fan; I basically go to help in terms of shopping (he's got a vinyl kaiju addiction). It was fun!

Yup! You'll probably have to get them off Amazon or whatever your online retailer of choice is, but they're eminently affordable.

It's…pretty good. Bacigalupi treats his noir structure so rigidly that, if you're well-read in the genre, it saps some of the surprise/wonder from it. But he creates an interesting world, and the characters are pretty engaging.

I've been reading Al Ewing's three Pax Britannia novels (a line of books from Rebellion in the UK; y'know, the 2000AD guys) that center on a Zorro-like reinvention of The Shadow named El Sombra. They…are pretty great. Gods of Manhattan, about El Sombra, a Doc Savage pastiche, and another, more straight-forward…

Yeah, I'm finishing up the first season now (literally; I'm watching the season finale while I type this), and…it shapes up dramatically. Especially, and this is a weird thing for me to like, how Matt Servitto's lack of personality is the basis for his personality. Also, Job turning out to be a crazy capable killer.…

Eh, the plots are…silly, a lot of the time, there seems to be at least one distracting scene of mandatory female nudity in every episode (you could practically make a drinking game with it), a lot of characters seem to exist solely as stereotypes, and man, there's way too much crime for a town this size.

TV: I'm halfway through the first season of Banshee. This…is a terrible TV show. It's also a show that has every single trapping I could ever want in a show. Rural organized crime! Amoral protagonists! Power struggles! I mean, really, it's pretty much the same thing as Scalped. Except Scalped was good, and this…

Books: I've been reading Cherie Priest's Maplecroft, which is a pretty fun book where Lizzie Borden was killing her family because they were minions of Cthulhu. I'm about 90 pages in, and it's pretty great.

To be fair, REH imagined all his major fantasy properties as occurring at different points in time on the same world…though I still can't imagine it paying off.

Sooooo many comics. I'm still working through my C2E2 haul, and I keep adding more, because, well, it's a problem. Really, that's all I can say. Those Cable & Deadpool Ultimate Collections don't read themselves! Miracleman, too, as well as an anthology called Killer Queen, where each of the stories is based on a…

I've had City of Silk and Steel (though under its US name, Steel Seraglio) on my to-read for aaaaaaages, and have been meaning to get to that. I think part of it might also be is that it's from a small-time publisher. The only reason we even stock it at the airport bookstore I work at is because I ordered it.

Book 4/5 spoilers: