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Book: My Dad, Charles Fuge
Consider yourself warned that it may be some time before a non-children's book is picked here. This one has a wee bear boasting about how great his dad is to his friends in the jungle, until he's all alone. It's partly to blame for the recent change in Sam to her being a "Daddy's Girl," and recently elicited a moment I'll describe later that simply melted my heart.
CD: John Ottman, Score, Superman Returns
I love my wife dearly, but she's not great when it comes to noticing film scores. She beat me to the punch about discussing the Ottman-penned score to Bryan Singer's relaunch of the Superman franchise, which floored me. (Her noticing the music floored me, that is.) Ottman, who provided fantastic music for The Usual Suspects and X2, provides yet another great score here, weaving in elements, cues, and even whole movements from the original Williams score while still maintaining his own identity.
DVD/Film: Superman Returns
I will post a more in depth review here later, but I will say that this is yet another fantastic Singer film. I went in expecting a solid character film with some action, and I got a really powerful character film with some great action scenes. Despite being (again) the weakest cast member, Parker Posey didn't detract from my enjoyment of the film, and Kevin Spacey simply outshined the memories of Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor. No disrespect is intended to anyone who worked on the Donner films, but finally there is a Superman film where the characters are actually believable, and not simply cutouts from the comic book.
Magazine: Playboy Magazine, October 2006
Michael "Heckuva Job" Brown is interviewed. First comment: I recognized the neighborhood in the photos of Brownie - my Sam stays near there during the day. Second comment: Brown needs to remember that for every finger he points at someone else, there are three more pointing back at himself.
TV: Feasting on Asphalt, Food Network
Well, it was either Alton Brown's Feasting on Asphalt or SciFi's Who Wants To Be a Superhero? and I couldn't justify the latter, no matter how unintentionally funny it was. FoA is one of the best "road shows" I've seen in years, and was a nice panacea when the TiVo crapped out and I lost all the Moyers on Faith episodes I had recorded. If PBS would rerun stuff as often as Food Network does, I'd be okay. In the meantime, I get to see Alton take in a Cosmic Dog near my old stomping grounds on Highway 17 in Mount Pleasant in Episode 1 when he begins his journey on the Isle of Palms, South Carolina, and then finishes it with a broken clavicle on the coast of California. Better than his other show, Good Eats, which is probably sacrilegious to say...
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