Smorgasbord Fantasia

This was a ritual that we had to do. To pay homage to the biggest bad-shah of Bollywood when he came back alive on the big screen after like close to eighteen months. So there we were, two days after a super exciting and exhausting diwali, hauling ourselves to watch Ra.One, the biggest blockbuster release of diwali 2011. First impressions as we walked out of the theatre, the movie is definitely NOT as BAD as the critics have panned it to be. Frankly, I had not read any reviews of the movie, for fear of letting the bad reviews cloud my judgment. But yeah, not one of the most memorable movies of King Khan either. The real reason, if you ask me, was that this movie is after all about a video-game. And how much soul can you put into a video-game? Warning: Mild Spoilers ahead. The annoying real-life Shahrukh, plays a game developer/scientist who is a tamil stereotype who eats ( nay, practically slurrrps up ) noodles with thayir (curd!) and mouths ayyoo for practically anything and e...

Finished the altered carbon, debut novel by Richard Morgan last week. Would be an understatement to say that I was blown away by this book. It marked my foray back into science fiction after ages. And I loved the same. My mind is still blowing in the air :) Anyways, I chanced on the book after I read the extract of his latest foray into Fantasy, The Cold Commands, Book two in the series, a Land fit for Heroes. This marks his return to the much acclaimed foray into the lands of Fantasy. Be it fantasy or science fiction ( we are talking Takeshi Kovacs vs. Ringil!) rest assured of one thing – there will be a lot of cool action, gut-wrenching, blood-spurting in-your-face violence, swearing that would put coastal fisherfolk to shame and even graphic depictions of sex. However none of that will ever take away the sheen from the sheer tour de force that his books are. Compelling reads peppered with intelligent ideas and brilliant flowing prose, in a pace that never lets up. I read the e...

Mr. Spielberg is back. With Dinosaurs!! ( Did I hear you squeal??!!!#@#$) – ahem no it ain’t Jurassic park-4. This time though, it’s a full fledged series. While some of you may groan since the diehard fans of the dino-movies kinda tuned out right after the first two movies, as the third had NOTHING new to offer us and going by the same argument, a full blooded series based on dinos running one hour prime time week after week might not be that hot! Correct. I unfortunately tend to be part of that faction. Until of course I watched the first PILOT of this new series, Terra Nova. While this didn’t completely “blow me away” this certainly had me interested and wanting to watch where the series went. This is going to be a mini-review – heck, more like what I LIKED and DISLIKED about the series. First things first, for a mini-series to be about dinosaurs, it had better have something new to offer rather than winged reptiles creating havoc in your domestic life when you went for a vacati...

I haven’t been enamored by a book-review blog so much in the recent past! So this is a shout-out to Sarah at bookworm blues for having maintained such an awesome top-notch quality blog on Fantasy books, reviews and author news. It is absolutely brilliant!  I started reading the entries and was struck by the ease, flowing prose and the excellent thought-provoking reviews that came out – churned out at an amazing speed one after the other inspite of her having to cope up with so many personal emergencies ( like, LIFE Happening in quite a BIG way!) - I just stuck through and through and within 3 days flat, had finished reading ALL her entries. Till the very beginning – May 2010.  Within such a short time to have achieved such a powerful voice in the SFF community is no tiny feat! Hats off to you Sarah! Another reason that I loved it so much was the fact that she kept it straight forward and didn’t veer from the original intentions. To write about books she read. And the boo...

Finally conquered this monster! While not quite that big a doorstopper at close to 700 pages (ahem...When you compare this to the mammoth Steven Erikson’s I been ploughing through, that is!) American Gods is indeed a meandering road trip that takes detours into all kinds of sub-genres that has been defined under “Speculative Fiction”, yet not quite fitting into any one niche. One word that definitely comes to my mind after having finished this, was – Staggering. It’s quite an achievement to have written this “weird” fiction that speaks volumes about the powerhouse of talent that Neil Gaiman truly is. The first I heard about Gaiman, was way back in 2005 when I saw the “Anansi Boys” and “American Gods” in my local bookstore. However I never followed up on that first teaser chapter about “Shadow” that I read then. Then I watched the movie, “Stardust” – a simple pure enchanting old style love story that had me flip over and see Gaiman in a new light. Then came the “SandMan” graphic no...