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E. A Solinas reviewed:
Black Cat, Volume 4 (Black Cat (Graphic Novels)) by Kentaro Yabuki
 Don't underestimate him, February 29, 2008 And in the fourth volume of this quirky action series, Kentaro Yabuki sheds some light on Sven's bittersweet past. But he doesn't stick to poignancy for long, before heading for quirky comedy, sweeping for assassins, and a dinner party with a very unusual guest. While Train demonstrates his shooting skill to Eve, Sven pays a visit to the grave of an old friend, who "donated" his eye. He flashes back to his days as an inspector, with his kindly clairvoyant partner Lloyd, who could see vital events a few seconds in the future. When Sven was captured and half-blinded by a vengeful gang, Lloyd came to his rescue -- and sacrificed himself to save Sven. Then thief-for-hire Rinslet blackmails Train into being her escort at a wealthy, grand ball, whose hostess has a valuable "treasure. And she reveals that a top-level bounty, assassin Rugato Won, has also infiltrated the party -- which interests Train greatly. But Won is a devastatingly lethal assassin, and capturing him might be a problem even for the former XIII... and the "large treasure" turns out to be something very dangerous as well. It took Yabuki a little while to reveal why Sven always wears an eyepatch, and he wasted no time in explaining why the lackadaisical man only has one clairvoyant eye. It also deepens Sven's character, revealing that he now works as a sweeper to further Lloyd's life purpose -- to capture criminals like those that murdered his parents, and him. It's only a few chapters, but Yabuki infuses it with a poignant, melancholic inevitability. Fortunately things lighten up when Rinslet reenters the scene, blackmailing poor Train with food and sex appeal. Then we get horribly ugly rich ladies, swank hotels, and some subtle flirtations from Rinslet that go straight over Train's head. The megavaluable prehistoric "treasure" turns out to be kind of weird, and the sort of thing one would expect from a boy who's visited the museum too many times. But admittedly this series does have a lot of bioengineering plotting -- and it gives Eve a chance to show her bizarre abilities. And Yabuki's artwork doesn't hurt either -- he has a knack for elegant, clean-cut artwork with fairly realistic proportions and lots of gorgeous detail. The hotel is really stunning. And he really shines in the fight scenes -- the ongoing battle between Won and Train is kinetic and wildly acrobatic, but you can still follow it. And while our dear pal Sven gets most of the character development in this one, we do get to see a little growth for Rinslet, Eve and Train. Train gets to demonstrate what a lethal fighter he can be even without his Hades gun, and Rinslet hints at a hidden attraction to Train. Finally, Eve gets to demonstrate her own brand of strength and determination. The fourth "Black Cat" starts poignantly, but then switches quickly to the mix of action and comedy that Kentaro Yabuki does so well. Just expect a few shocks along the way. |
| February 29, 2008 |
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N. Durham reviewed:
The Club
| 1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:  Mindless, arcade fun while it lasts, February 29, 2008 Fun: Sega's The Club feels like an old-school, arcade shooter with a next-gen gloss, and it certainly is by any stretch of the imagination. You run and race through a closed course, taking down as many enemies as you can in the process in some trigger happy, flashy ways. Once you pop in The Club, you'll be hooked by its run and gun style of play, that proves to be insanely fun at first. However, you'll find that it doesn't take you too long to get through the game, and while there are five total modes of play in The Club, many of them are very similar to each other. No matter what mode of play you are in, you have the same objective: obliterate everything in sight. The only real replay value that The Club offers is if you want to beat your own score, which will be enough reason for some gamers to go back through the game, but others will play it and be done with it. Still though, The Club looks and sounds good enough, and provides some great fun for a while, but once you finish it, which won't take too long or be too difficult, there isn't really anything left. All in all, The Club is definitely worth a look for those craving an old school, run and gun action game, but there isn't enough here to hold your interest for long. |
| February 29, 2008 |
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Donald Mitchell reviewed:
Christine Falls: A Novel by Benjamin Black
| Ellipitical Tale of a Drunk and His Guilt, February 29, 2008 Having a narrator who is usually drunk makes for interesting fiction, if the complication doesn't drive you away from the story. Clearly, that's a "serious" book ploy. Quirke is a pathologist. Malachy (Mal) Griffin is an OB/GYN. They work in the same hospital. In the rest of their lives, they are rivals for the approval of Mal's father, Judge Griffin, and were rivals for the love of Quirke's life, Sarah, who married Mal. The two are brothers-in-law due to Quirke having married Sarah's sister, Delia. Into that conflicted background, Quirke staggers down towards his office after overindulging at a staff party and finds Mal sitting at his desk writing in a patient record. The patient's name? Christine Falls. Her young body lies on a near-by gurney that Quirke accidentally undrapes. Soon, Quirke doesn't even remember the incident until he is reminded. But he cannot get the image off his mind and starts to probe into what happened to her. Strong forces strike back to limit his progress. If you stick it out, you'll be rewarded by appreciating some remarkable causes and effects that trace back over several decades . . . and make you realize that everything we do counts. A good analogy for this story is the effect of dropping a huge stone into a small pond -- the ripples will radiate out to the bank and back creating considerable turbulence for some time. The book is skeptical about the sanctity of the Catholic establishment in Dublin and in Boston. Some may be offended by the turns that the story takes in that direction. |
| February 29, 2008 |
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P. G. Keller reviewed:
Monster Standard 100 Instrument Cable 21 Ft. - Angled to Straight 1/4 Plugs (S100-I-21A)
 Good Cable, Good Features, Good Price, February 29, 2008 I didn't bother looking at them at Guitar Center as I just thought, I'm sure they're nice but I won't even bother looking at the price. The sales rep recommended them when I asked about some quality cables and told me about their lifetime guarantee. I'm tired of cables going on the fuzz and having to buy new ones only 2-3 yrs. after purchase so after seeing the price, I went for it. End result, they work perfectly. I was having some buzz and noise from my older cables but that's all gone now. The Monster cable sounds clean and clear. No more background interference. If you'll notice from the picture, Monster wisely chose to cover the bottom of the plug with a nice rubber cover. No more of those metal covers that unscrew, allowing dirt and dust to get in there. Those things caused alot of trouble for me over the years and I'm glad to not have to mess around with them anymore. The blue stripe is one of a few different color bands, which are included, that you can use to color code your cables with. So you can color each one for each purpose. Good feature. I like this cable and it's good to know that it'll be replaced for free forever under normal use and wear and tear. I've stayed away from Monster for home theater as their audio/video cables are outrageously over priced. But for playing guitar, I think I have my new brand. Recommended. |
| February 29, 2008 |
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P. G. Keller reviewed:
Monster Standard 100 Instrument Cable 12 ft. - straight 1/4 plugs S100-I-12
| Good Cable, Good Features, Good Price, February 29, 2008 I didn't bother looking at them at Guitar Center as I just thought, I'm sure they're nice but I won't even bother looking at the price. The sales rep recommended them when I asked about some quality cables and told me about their lifetime guarantee. I'm tired of cables going on the fuzz and having to buy new ones only 2-3 yrs. after purchase so after seeing the price, I went for it. End result, they work perfectly. I was having some buzz and noise from my older cables but that's all gone now. The Monster cable sounds clean and clear. No more background interference. If you'll notice from the picture, Monster wisely chose to cover the bottom of the plug with a nice rubber cover. No more of those metal covers that unscrew, allowing dirt and dust to get in there. Those things caused alot of trouble for me over the years and I'm glad to not have to mess around with them anymore. The blue stripe is one of a few different color bands, which are included, that you can use to color code your cables with. So you can color each one for each purpose. Good feature. I like this cable and it's good to know that it'll be replaced for free forever under normal use and wear and tear. I've stayed away from Monster for home theater as their audio/video cables are outrageously over priced. But for playing guitar, I think I have my new brand. Recommended. |
| February 29, 2008 |
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E. A Solinas reviewed:
Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition) DVD ~ Helena Bonham Carter
| The years have changed him..., February 29, 2008 Somehow it doesn't come as a shock to me that Tim Burton adapted Stephen Sondheim's musical "Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" -- or that he somehow spun it into something so delicious. That dark, grotesque, hilariously melodramatic story is perfectly suited to Burton's style, and Johnny Depp is absolutely stunning as the titular bloody barber. The malignant Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) lusts after the wife of Benjamin Barker (Depp), so he convicts Barker of a crime he didn't commit, and enfolds his family into his evil hands. But fifteen years later, the Barker returns to London and sets up a barber shop over Mrs. Lovett's ghastly meat pie store. Of course, he's enraged when he learns that his wife was raped and since poisoned herself, and that his daughter is the ward of the lecherous Judge. Enraged and maddened, Barker renames himself "Sweeney Todd" and vows revenge. And he finds that he LOVES using his razors for a far bloodier task than shaving. With the help of Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) -- who finds a thrifty use for those bodies -- Todd cuts a bloody swathe through all who have wronged him. And when his daughter is punished for refusing to marry the cruel Judge, Sweeney closes in to get his revenge at last. There's always been a gothic look to Burton's movies, and he's always dabbled in very twisted, macabre storylines. And he really tops himself with "Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" -- London is painted in black, white and grey, right down to the ghoulish faces of the characters, and their bleak little dens of horror. And songs -- lots of magnificently horrible songs. But Burton pretty obviously adores the combination of gory grotesquerie and very, very sick humour ("They don't commit sins of the flesh, so it's pretty fresh"). And he doesn't try to make Sweeney or Mrs. Lovett palatable, thankfully. While we sympathize with Sweeney's losses, and the horrors that have changed him into the Demon Barber, you just can't pass over scenes where they sing, "It's man devouring man, my dear!" "Then who are we to deny it in here?" There are some moments that relieve this gory gothic parade -- there's a sweet love story between Sweeney's daughter and a young sailor. And the plot becomes progressively darker toward the end (yes, it CAN get worse), when the plot throws us some shocking new twists, resulting in a Grecian-tragedy finale soaked in even more gore. Oh yes, there's blood. Tons of it. It spurts like Monty Python's bloodier sketches, which ends up being more hilarious than yucky -- as is the casual introduction of cannibal meat pies. And there are some spectacularly gross moments, like a finger found in one of the pies. Burton uses some of his favorite actors in this one, particularly Depp and Bonham-Carter. Depp is THE perfect ideal Sweeney Todd -- his creepy eyes, pallid face and still, almost seductive manner are perfect for the maddened murderous barber. He goes through the movie slashing his razors at the world, and injects a real creepiness into scenes like Sweeney cooing at his "friends." While she's only a passable singer, Bonham-Carter is eerily wholehearted as Todd's equally amoral partner-in-crime, who is quite happy to assist him.... and make tastier pies in the process. Rickman is wonderfully loathsome as the Judge, and Sacha Baron Cohen has a small but priceless role as Pirello, a huckster acquaintance of Todd's who starts causing trouble. He really steals his scenes. Most directors would have prettified, sanitized and defanged the grotesque "Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," but Tim Burton and Johnny Depp revel in the gore and madness. Astoundingly great. |
| February 29, 2008 |
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N. Durham reviewed:
We Love Katamari
| More spectacularly weird fun, February 28, 2008 Fun: Namco's Katamari Damacy proved to be a big surprise hit when released stateside, and We Love Katamari provides more of the same spectacularly weird fun. If you played the first game, then you'll have no trouble getting into We Love Katamari, as not much at all has changed in the overall gameplay. You are still rolling around a nicely sized sticky ball collecting all kinds of stuff to get bigger, and bigger, and bigger; and it's still tons of enjoyable fun. There are a few new twists on the Katamari formula though, including rolling a sumo wrestler over food items to get him fatter, as well as rolling planets, stars, and constellations to get big enough to roll up the sun. While the game still provides the same amount of fun, We Love Katamari also suffers from what Katamari Damacy did, the game is too short for its own good. That aside, We Love Katamari is every bit as fun and trippy as its predecessor, and if you loved rolling your katamari around last time as much as everyone else who ate up the game, picking this up is a no brainer. |
| February 28, 2008 |
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E. A Solinas reviewed:
Blood - The Last Vampire DVD ~ Youki Kudoh
| She's the last original, February 28, 2008 Well, most of them, anyway. Things are a bit different in "Blood: The Last Vampire," an anime movie that bravely throws out most of the vampire preconceptions, as well as plot exposition. It's not a total success storywise, but it's an effectively dark, moody piece of bloody action. As the movie opens, we see a mysterious young girl, Saya, on a train. When the lights go out, she savagely attacks a man at the other end of the train with a sword. It turns out the man was a Chiropteran -- a sort of bat-vampire. When her coworkers arrive to clean up the mess, Saya learns that the Chiropterans have infiltrated the general public -- and she has to go undercover at a girls' high school near an American military base. She isn't happy about it, but goes anyway. Saya begins snooping around for evidence of Chiropterans, and finds it -- a pair are disguised as ordinary high school girls. But when she corners them, a timid nurse accidentally gets involved in the bloodbath that ensues -- and a deadly cat-and-mouse game between the mysterious Saya and her monstrous prey. "Blood: The Last Vampire" is one of those movies where the plot isn't the overwhelming force. In fact, the actual story isn't much -- it feels like tuning into an episode of a weekly TV show, without much explanation for who Saya is and what is going on. And after the first third, the movie is pretty much entirely devoted to "Saya hacks and slashes her way through the school while the nurse screams a lot." But the visual presentation is stunning -- every scenes is saturated with shadows and vague, pale light. And while many scenes are quiet and almost motionless, the action scenes explode with kinetic energy, splashes of gore, and occasionally a raging fire. And when Saya jumps into action, the entire world seems to speed up into a blur of violence and splattered blood. One thing you have to say -- there are no stereotypically pretty, European vampires here. There's only Saya -- a cold-eyed girl who looks like Angelina Jolie's gothy baby sister -- and a lot of grotesque bat creatures, with huge muzzles and big claws. The most "human" person here is probably the timid nurse, but we never really get to know her until the end. "Blood: The Last Vampire" isn't too worried about having a plot, but for splattery action and fast-moving vampire battles, it's a dark diversion. |
| February 28, 2008 |
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Gail Cooke reviewed:
Prepared for Rage: A Novel by Dana Stabenow
| AN AWARD CALIBER VOICE PERFORMANCE, February 28, 2008 Edgar winning author Stabenow has moved from her Alaskan settings to a kinder climate- the sunny waters of the Caribbean just off the Florida coast. Nearby is the Kennedy Space Center and it is here where the next space shuttle mission is to take place. What makes this launch unique is that it is the target of an amoral Pakistani terrorist, Akil Vihari, who hopes to hit America where it hurts the most. Amidst the efforts to track down Vilhari there is, of course, a love interest. We hear astronaut Kenai Munro describe her impression of Captain Schuyler: "His eyes were very blue. Sailor's eyes. She thought he might be blond, but like every other male crew member she'd seen he'd shaved his head almost down to the scalp in preparation for sea showers on patrol and it was hard to tell. Come to think of it, he didn't look anything at all like Robert Redford. Robert Redford was a troll by comparison." It's pretty clear where that's going and we can easily surmise what the outcome of the hunt for terrorists will be. However, it's quite a trip getting there as excitement abounds and surprises wait at every turn. Enjoy! - Gail Cooke |
| February 28, 2008 |
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Gail Cooke reviewed:
Paula Dorf Eye Color Glimmer by Paula Dorf
| FOR CANDLELIGHT DINNERS AND MOONLIT NIGHTS, February 28, 2008 Her line of Glimmer shadows have a hint of gold in them - not too much but just enough for a sun kissed effect. Another plus for these Glimmer shadows is that they can also be used to contour or line. For lining simply use a moistened eye liner brush. There's a lovely palette of shades to choose from depending upon day or dramatic evening wear. "Nymph" is an appealing innocent blue, while "Hypnotic" is ready for a night on the town. - Gail Cooke |
| February 28, 2008 |
