You’re welcome - and they *are *brilliant books, although the first one is perhaps the weakest. It’s only when the midden really hits the windmill that the series becomes seven kinds of awesome, and that takes some setup time.
My Dad trying to sell his 11 year-old son on Raiders of the Lost Ark:
“I want to take you to this movie. A guy at work said it’s really good.”
“What’s it about?”
“An archeologist. He’s looking for the lost ark of the covenant.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s the box they but the 10 commandments in.”
“grooooannnnn… really? a scientist looking for biblical artifacts? :rolleyes: sounds enthralling dad.”
My wife doen’t have any interest in movies, except for the occassional romantic comedy. At any given time she has no idea what’s showing. But every once in a while a fella wants to take his wife to a movie, ya know?
Several years ago…
Me: Let’s go see a movie.
Wife: What movie?
Me: I don’t know. Let me check the paper (rustle rustle rustle)…Hmmmm, nothing much looks any good. How about Batman Begins? Supposed to be good action; heard some good things–shouldn’t be too violent.
Wife: I would hate that movie (scrunches up her nose–I can tell I need to find another movie quick)
Me: (noticing something for the first time)–Hey! How about March of the Penguins! Oh, man, I heard about that! I really want to see that!
Wife: March of the Penguins? What is it?
Me: Well, see, there’s this penguin. And it has an egg. And, and, well, it’s cold because they live on the ice. But sometimes they swim away from the seal that’s trying to eat them. And I think they have to move to another spot. And, uh, did I mention there’s this egg?
Wife: What was that other movie again?
Sigh
You tried to describe March of the Penguins without using the word “documentary”?
Oh, I probably mentioned it was a true story. A nature film. It was 5 years ago and I’m paraphrasing from memory.
But it wouldn’t have mattered in my description. My wife likes nature about as much as she likes vampire / robot / kill movies. Which is to say, not at all.
In the Garden of Iden, by Kage Baker.
“Well, there’s these immortal cyborgs, see, and they’re in England during the reign of Bloody Mary and trying to collect plant specimens for a corporation in the future… No really! Come back!”
I’ve gotten many sneering responses when I’ve suggested it. It’s a good book! No really! Come baaaaaack!
The problem there is that he neglected to mention the Nazis. Take that description, and add that the Nazis are trying to find the Ark first to use its power to conquer the world, and the movie suddenly gets a lot more interesting.
I put off reading the Dresden Files for a long time based on the name: I figured it was going to involve horrific firebombings of entire cities, or at least the aftermath, and I wasn’t in the mood for something so grim. When I finally found out it was a comic series about a wizard detective who fights vampires, it sounded way too cornball to be good. I didn’t count on how ridiculously fun the books are.
Oh, good one, LHOD! I thought the same.
Well, it’s pretty easy to explain: transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.
Your link leads nowhere, I fear. And Dorothy never meets the Witch of the East anyway.
Anyway, here isCaptain Amazing’s god-damn-brilliant explanation of the movie in question.
…the hell? It was supposed to go to a genuine appearance of it in TV guide listings, from the NJ Marin Independent Journal…well, now it seems to be working again.
I prefer:
In an effort to gain absolute power, a purportedly “good” minor ruler of a northerly backwater province connives to use a lost child and her three sidekicks to overthrow the existing power structure of her kingdom, leaving her the only one in charge.
Fortunately, we are not shown the depressing and horrific aftermath.
I can’t ever tell anyone what happens in Curb Your Enthusiasm in a way that makes a single episode sound funny, but they are.
The premise of The Big Bang Theory was so hackneyed that none of the initial reviewers held out any hope for it. "Hot chick moves in apartment across the hall from two nerds. "Yeah, like that hasn’t been done about a billion times before.
Umm… this sounds ridiculously awesome and cries out to be adapted into a graphic novel series by Oni Press.
“Well what’s the show about?”
“It’s about nothing.”
“No story?”
“No forget the story.”
I can’t believe I just ordered this. ;)
I am a sucker for attempts at rock books. So many are so bad, but I keep going back…at least this sounds a bit fun…
DING! Knew it.
Sandman… It’s not a story about some pasty white god-things. It’s a framework for telling stories about stories. In nearly all of the best issues, Dream barely shows up- and never as the protagonist.
So Elvis is living in an East Texas nursing home, where his only friend is JFK (who is black: “The CIA made me this color…ALL OVER!”), who convinces Elvis that there’s an Egyptian mummy around, sucking the souls out of the old folks.
Really! It is pretty good!