REVIEW SUMMARY: Excellent thriller .

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Two men awaken in a decrepit room to find themselves chained to the wall. Both have a hacksaw (which cuts through flesh but not the chain). One of the men has a bullet and instructions to kill the other man before time runs out. A dead body lies on the floor between them (just out of reach). In the dead man’s hand is a gun.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Great story that kept ratcheting up the tension to a thrilling ending that took me by surprise.

CONS: Sub-par acting from Glover, Elwes and Potter.

BOTTOM LINE: Serial killer film as graphic as Se7en and as tense as Hitchcock.

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Yes, that is an excellent question which I am sure we all have wondered at one point in our lives. Well some physists at Cornell have figured it out, and its a very interesting solution.

REVIEW SUMMARY: Two excellent novellas, one good one and one political snoozer in a handsome volume.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Anthology consisting of four 2001 novellas written by British authors.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Two excellent stories; a book with high quality production.

CONS: One story, way too political for my tastes, marred an otherwise excellent collection.

BOTTOM LINE: Worth it for the 2 excellent stories alone.

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You can download the Guild Wars client software from here and kick the tires. The Beta starts next week, I think for those droolers that pre-ordered the game.

…over at the official Star Wars website.

Not that I subscribe to the official Star Wars newsfeed or anything.

Editor’s Note: I’m pretty sure John meant Ep3 so I modified his title.

Hasbro (via the Milton Bradley brand) will be releasing a new batch of Star Wars games next year.

One of them uses a wireless lightsaber controller with a game running on your TV – let your inner jedi shine through baby…

In my daily round of website perusing, I saw this link on Engadget. I give the technology a few years and we will soon be performing Level 2 diagnostics on all sorts of stuff. Either that or being beat up for looking total dweebs with it on…

For the Revenge of the Sith movie (that has not been released yet) – but that does not stop the announcements. I know its not a big announcement, nor is it a surprise.

Blog Explosion is a website geared toward increasing blog traffic using a “reciprocal browse” approach (you browse me and I’ll browse you). I’m not entirely sure why anyone would want to increase their blog traffic. To hit their web hosts bandwidth limit? To have to pay extra money every month so strangers can read your personal ramblings? Bah!

Way back when, I was hesitant about staring my own personal blog because I though it was just too vain. The group blog approach, I realize now, is an entirely different beast. Good idea, JP! It’s more like a community for friends. Sure, we have occasional external readers and a few of those are even welcome regulars (Hi Fred, John, James and Jeff!) . When I have nothing to post, you can be sure others will pick up the slack. That keeps the blog going. The group part makes for an interesting dynamic as well with different points of view and opinions forgetting, for the moment, the unfortunate in-fighting.

At any rate, as useless as the Blog Explosion website appears, it does offer a useful categorized blog directory.

The good news: Although Century City (whose one episode I saw left me undecided) was cancelled after only four episodes, 9 were shot. The leftover 5 episodes will be re-aired.

The bad news (for the U.S.) is that it will only be airing in the UK, Canada and Australia. D’oh!

[via Sci-Fi Ranter Girl]

SciFi Wire reports that prduction is set to begin on the ABC miniseries Desperation, based on the Stephen King book. If memory serves, it was a decent book. Hopefully, the miniseries will do it justice.

…on Adult Swim on CartoonNetwork (not carttonnetwork, which doesn’t work anymore), then you’ll like this one — definitely NOT work-safe.

I know Scott the Golden Boy hates South Park, but he would have enjoyed the season premiere tonight. Where else, could he have seen members of PETA (doesn’t it stand for Psychotic Eco-Terrorist Assclowns??) get blown away by P. Diddy in a bloody construction-paper-animated slaughter-fest?

After you catch your breath from the hilarity, you’re ready to watch the funny new animated reality show Drawn Together. Aside from the lengthy girl/girl tongue-wrestling scene¹, my favorite line is still “…you can cut the tension with a +6 sword…” as spoken by the resident D&D reject.

¹This is the trailer, you might have fast forward a little to see the scene. Probably not work-safe.

Do not print these Star Wars masks out and make your kid wear them!

You should do it for yourself, ya big fanboy.

That Leia mask looks plain creepy. But now you can pretend to shoot an Ewok or knock on someone’s door and when they answer say: “Trick or IT’S A TRAP!!!!!!”

When John told me that I was merely satiating my craving for attention when posting the MLB piece, he likened me to the long-haired shock-jock Howard Stern to which I replied with a hearty, “I wish! Have you seen his new wife?!” So in my continued attempt grab attention, and to satisfy your need for a supermodel article, here’s a link (hopefully, not work-safe) for you. When I grow up, I hope I, too, can make millions, so that a beautiful girl would marry me despite my own total lack of beauty.

While we’re at it, do you guys know about alltheweb.com search engine? It’s especially good for finding those free, not-for-work images (and mpegs, too).

Gaming Report had a link about designing your own Legionaire contest being run by Triskele Games. The rules for the contest state that folks are to come up with thier own version of what a Roman Legionaire would look like in 2364. Then after researching that I found out they are publishing a set of rules for a tabletop Sci Fi game. It looks intriguing as it involves multiple universes and a build an army from scratch idea that allows you to use what figures you have versus buying new stuff.

Check it out …

My hourly stroll through /. has a post that Jump to Lightspeed for Star Wars Galaxies has launched today. So get out there and see if you can make the Kessel Run faster than Han Solo. This brought to you from the “Bout damned time” department.

Also, we were in dire need of some Star Wars postings…

Update: I fixed the category since it should really be Star Wars…

…at SciFi Weekly.

I’ve been threatening to read one of his books for weeks now. So much to read, so little time…

Until 2007, to see atotal lunar eclipse!. Tonight!

This announcement brought to you so the unawares among us (you know who you are) get the message. The festivities start around 7pm CDT tonight, with the good stuff happening around 8:14 and 10:23 (totality, not to be confused with fatality) pm CDT.

Go forth and gaze! If it isnt cloudy….

Wirehead attempts to explain the genre of science fiction and its sub-genres. As mentioned by the author, this is a topic of much debate.

Prologue: I really wanted this article to have a category of ‘Fantasy’ but I don’t have the power to add it, and the admin is too big of a Sagan to add it for me, so just pretend this article has categorized as ‘Fantasy’ as you read it.

Is it really fantasy? Perhaps not, it looks like the BoSox can go all the way now with their 3-0 lead in the World Series; finally, snapping their cursed streak and what a comeback it will be — especially after whooping those worthless Yankees last week from an 0-3 deficit. At this point, only an all-out invasion of undead space zombies from Rigel-7 can keep them from winning it all!

The Delphi XM MyFi Satellite Radio is billed as “the world’s first XM2go receiver – a personal XM satellite radio”. The $350 price tag includes a home kit, car kit and headphones. It has a “Live Mode” that receives over 130 digital XM channels and a “Memory Mode” that can store up to 5 hours (recordeed live or scheduled to record when the system is not in use).

Cool. I like the idea of not being tied down to a home receiver. I’m not entirely sure that I listen to that much radio to warrant a subscription, though. Then again, maybe if I had the subscription I would.

Anyone have XM radio experiences/impressions they’d like to share?

The November issue of the Internet Review of Science Fiction has a nice writeup of Theodore Sturgeon. I’m glad to see that someone else enjoys his writing style as much as I do. If you’ve never read Sturgeon, you’re missing out on one of the best authors the field will ever see.

A little treat for all the Firefox lovers out there (you know who you are).

Unhappy with your currect job? Popular Science lists The Worst Jobs in Science, a follow-up to last year’s article. A subtitle for this article could be How to Discourage Anyone from Enterting the Field of Science.