Pop Apocalypse shares some kinship in its ideas with Dani and Eytan Kollin's The Unincorporated Man and Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. But the cultural phenomenon it most clearly evokes is The Hills. Yes, the quasi-reality show in which vapid twenty-somethings gallivant through Los Angeles. But it's not that Konstantinou is celebrating all things bleach blond and Hollywood. Quite the contrary, he sets forth the frightening proposition that The Hills might be our future.

Eliot R. Vanderthorpe Jr. is our Lauren Conrad. A failed academic (he never did finish his applied philosophy thesis on Elvis impersonators), Vanderthorpe is also a minor, sometimes unwilling, celebrity. Eliot's billionaire father, Eliot Sr., developed Omni, an advanced human recognition software that can identify any human on Earth from any photo or video. While being able to spot suspected terrorists and fugitives from the law is all well and good, most people use Omni as part of the celebrity machine. With tabloids and news outlets paying big bucks for celebrity footage, soon everyone becomes a member of the paparazzi, filming everyone and everything all the time in hopes of a big payoff. And, in a world where everyone's every move is being recorded, anyone can end up a celebrity.

This new celebrity culture has two drastic results. First, a person's name and reputation become a commodity, a thing that can be bought and sold. Depending on one's popularity and recent actions, footage of them can fetch a certain price from media outlets. It's sort of like a cynical, hypercapitalistic form of whuffie. At the same time, individuals can decide to "go public," selling shares of their reputation on a special stock exchange. Shareholders even get a vote in the workings of the reputation they own. This suits the evangelical Eliot Sr. quite nicely, as he all but analogizes the invisible hand of the free market with the invisible hand of God.

The second result is that celebrity culture has overrun every aspect of modern life. Cultural studies has become a popular major at universities, not to scrutinize the effect of pop culture on our society, but so they can become reputation managers and sell coming-of-age shows to Disney. Entire academic conferences are devoted to celebrities like Eliot, and scholars write papers analyzing his decision to change his major or cheat on his girlfriend. The Middle East is largely ruled by a pop singer, and whether his lyrics could be construed as a denial of the Holocaust could determine whether war breaks out with Israel. The world is rapidly falling into decay — rioting, terrorism — and there is excited talk among evangelical Christians that the apocalypse is coming.

Pop Apocalypse is at its best when it explores how Omni and this new celebrity culture has affected daily life in America. Eliot Jr., just returned as the prodigal son after a period of mindless debauchery, tries to navigate his celebrity status while maintaining something of a private life. The Hills isn't reality, and neither is Eliot's public face. His clothes, his personal wit and wisdom, his questions to adoring inflight magazines, all are carefully maintained and scripted by the family reputation manger, named (what else?) Karl. At the same, he's forced to make genuine, heartfelt statements to his on-and-off girlfriend in front of the cameras, and his every stumble and faux-pas is analyzed by hundreds of armchair scholars. It's all complicated enough before Eliot discovers he has a doppelganger, one the Omni mistakes for him.

The looming apocalypse, on the other hand, feels more like a gimmick, something to make you pick up the book and read a much more interesting story about surveillance technology and celebrity culture run amok. Konstantinou tries valiantly to connect his multithreaded satires. He proposes that we're so desensitized, so relentlessly marketed to, that when the apocalypse comes, we'll be talking about its strength as a brand identity instead of trying to save the world. But his geopolitical ideas aren't as detailed as his technological and cultural ones, and never quite gel.

The book certainly belongs to the family of zany, self-consciously hip books that have come out in the last decade or so, which is fine since Konstantinou has plenty of interesting ideas to convey. But he does take a few swipes at some low-hanging fruit. His Christian capitalists are a bit cartoony, San Francisco hasn't changed except that its stubborn, collectivist hipsters are getting older, and Disney has put out a feel-good musical called The Mongol Hordes. Sometimes, it feels like the book needs a few good shoves into more ludicrous territory to get away with its own jokes.

But Pop Apocalypse is a genuinely frightening book, not for its apocalyptic prophesies, but for its peek five minutes into the future. It's suggestion that photo-tagging software could someday turn all of existence into the ultimate reality television show isn't far-fetched in the least. One character comments that when you see how sausage gets made, you'll want to become a vegetarian. And in Pop Apocalypse, we're the sausage, and the whole world sees how we're being made all the time.

Sandman Slim follows the adventures of Jimmy, aka Stark, aka Sandman Slim, who was dragged down to Hell as a cocky teenager and somehow survived for eleven years, before busting out. The only person he cared about is dead, and he's out for revenge — and he doesn't really care what he has to break to get it. Along the way, he gets dragged deeper and deeper into the politics of the L.A. magic scene, the ongoing feud between Hell's generals, the schemes of angels, Homeland Security, and the decadent plans of L.A.'s filthy rich magic users.

As someone who's read every novel by Mickey Spillane, Raymond Chandler, Richard Stark/Donald Westlake and Ross McDonald at least once, I found the frothiness and nihilism of the novel instantly appealing. Here's one especially Spillane-esque section, from towards the end of the book:

There's only one problem with L.A.

It exists.

L.A. is what happens when a bunch of Lovecraftian elder gods and porn starlets spend a weekend locked up in the Chateau Marmont snorting lines of crank off Jim Morrison's bones. If the Viagra and illegal Traci Lords videos don't get you going, then the Japanese tentacle porn will...

L.A. is all assholes and angels, bloodsuckers and trust-fund satanists, black magic and movie moguls with more bodies buried under the house than John Wayne Gacy.

There are more surveillance camersa and razor wire here than around the pope. L.A. is one traffic jam from going completely Hiroshima.

God, I love this town.

In another section, Stark visits a house full of rich magician assholes and scenesters, and describes them using timeless phrases like "They shit cancer."

Another crucial ingredient in the noir formula, a massive cast of corrupt day-players, each with his/her own agenda and hypocrisies, also manifests pretty well in the book. It takes place in a universe that will seem familiar to anyone who's watched Supernatural or read any of a dozen other dark urban fantasy novels set in a vaguely Judeo-Christian universe. Angels are dicks, demons are pretty nasty, and the world is full of monsters of various stripes — including humans, who are usually just out for their own gain.

But Kadrey also laces his novel's set-up with a fair amount of wish-fulfillment: Besides having survived a long stint in Hell and returned to talk about it, Stark is also almost impossible to kill thanks to a Nietzschean "whatever doesn't kill me" type thing. Early on in the book, he gets shot multiple times, and the bullets only cause him a bit of discomfort. He's got a magic knife that can cut anything and start any car, and a magic key that can transport him anywhere, including Heaven or Hell. And a Veritas, a kind of magic eight-ball that answers questions truthfully, but snarkily. Oh, and he knows special Hell magic that nobody else on Earth knows. So he gets to have the perfect heroic combination — he's miserable and filled with self-loathing and bitterness, but he also has a toychest full of awesomeness that most people would kill their extended family for.

In other words, it's the perfect escapist storyline — for some reason, escapism actually works better with a permanently grim and/or depressed hero. Just look at Batman.

Oh, the other thing about Sandman Slim is that it's frequently side-splittingly funny. Stark has sworn to kill all of the people who sent him to Hell and had a hand in killing his girlfriend. But the first co-conspirator he catches up with is Kasabian, who was sort of a pathetic lapdog back then and has now been consigned to running a video store in a crappy neighborhood. Kasabian shoots Stark, who decapitates him in turn. But Kasabian doesn't die (magic knife, remember) and Kasabian's disembodied head sits on a shelf for much of the rest of the novel, commenting on the action and begging for cigarettes. The whole book is like that — gruesome slapstick mixed with down-and-dirty Hammett-esque mayhem and double-dealing.

The whole thing reminded me somewhat of a slightly darker, cleverer version of Monster by A. Lee Martinez, the last book about a semi-human monster who defends the world from other monsters that I read. Where Sandman Slim has a jump on Monster is in its hero, who is both more tormented and more sympathetic than Monster's sad-sack protagonist.

Sandman Slim's main drawback is its plot, which doesn't bear much examination — about halfway, or maybe two thirds of the way, through the book, the exposition starts getting thicker and thicker, and various characters pop up to explain stuff, and then other characters jump in to explain those explanations. Soon enough, the simple tale of a horrendously scarred bastard who crawled out of Hell to kill a bunch of people who deserved it gets more and more muddled with a lot of other stuff. It sort of overpowers the fun revenge rampage you've been primed for since the start of the book — but the good news is, there's still plenty of death, destruction and despair to go around, and the book's final big action set pieces are a lot of fun. It's easy to see why people were talking about it at Comic Con.

All in all, Sandman Slim brings a pleasingly loathesome L.A. vibe to its tale of Hell's inmate's progress. As you'd hope for a novel in the "urban fantasy" genre, the city itself is one of the novel's main characters, teeming with crack dealers and Brad Pitt lookalikes and neo-Nazis — oh, and angels and demons and assorted other nasties. If you've been hoping someone would bring the full-strength SoCal toxic waste to the urban fantasy game, then Sandman Slim is your poison.

Allegedly, this book actually came out in June or July, even though my review copy says August. Which is why we only just got around to reviewing it. Anyway, it's out now: [Amazon]

It sounds like the next Harry Potter film will be a journey both into the dark underbelly of the mystical realm, with breaks for the students to make out between the stacks. Reviewers didn't even seem too miffed the film cut out the novel's big climactic scene. And what of the films running time (the longest of the Potter films thus far)? Not long enough, says some critics — bladders be damned, you'll supposedly will be looking for bottle to fill on the floor, so not to miss a moment of the action.

Variety:

Steve Kloves happily returned to once again skillfully condense a massive book into manageable dramatic form; among many tough narrative decisions, he has cut back on the violent mayhem surrounding the murderous climax and put off the introduction of Minister of Magic Rufus Scrimgeour until the next episode....

Director David Yates, after a prosaic series debut on the prior film, displays noticeably increased confidence here, injecting more real-world grit into what began eight years ago as purest child's fantasy; messenger owls and chattering house elves have been superseded by a frank Underground tea-room flirtation, school security checks and raging teenage hormones. The sets have been stripped down to reduce Hogwarts' fairy-book aspects and emphasize its gray medieval character, and even the obligatory Quidditch match is staged with greater attention to spatial comprehensibility than ever before.

the film is clear-headed and clean-lined; now that he's at home with the material, Yates has made a "Potter" picture that is less desperate to please than any of its predecessors, itself a sign of series maturity.

The Daily Mail

David Yates has found his footing in his second outing as a Harry Potter movie maker after 2007's Harry Potter And The Order of the Phoenix and his decision to use cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel was a masterstroke.

The film looks great and Delbonnel gives the picture a palette of dark hues that lure us into the story and keep us there. I looked at my watch just once during the 153 minute running time, and that was to work out whether I had time to race to the loo. But I stayed in my seat. I didn't want to miss a single moment.

The Guardian

There's lots of blushing, stammering and smooching. Will Harry lock lips with Ginny? Is Ron smart enough to see that Hermione ... well, it's not Skins. Hands are kept above the waist at all times.

Putatively winsome all this may be, but what it actually does is throw the series' biggest weakness into sharp relief: film-making can (and does) control pretty much everything – except how the cute juvenile leads grow up. Still, director David Yates knows how to play all the cards. Although a touch ungainly, his film is solidly constructed, with lots of fine effects. If, as Potter approaches his final confrontation with Voldemort, the wizardly battles begin to resemble Lord of the Rings, it's hardly a handicap; this is tried and tested cinematic language, and does all it needs.

The Hollywood Reporter

Bottom Line: A jerky start of exposition and backstory gives way to vigorous storytelling in the latest chapter of Harry Potter.

Composer Nicholas Hooper, cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel and designer Stuart Craig deliver a singularly muscular and vigorous chapter while all the visual and digital effects have now blended seamlessly into the package.

CHUD

Is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince the best Harry Potter film yet? Oh yes. Is it one of the best films of the year? Oh yes again.

Could a Harry Potter film make a showing at the Oscars in a non-technical category? If Warner Bros plays their cards right I believe that they could easily wrangle a nod for [Jim] Broadbent, who plays new Potions teacher Horace Slughorn.

If you're not onboard with the Potter films don't even think of jumping aboard with this one. While Half-Blood Prince is so good that I think it would charm even the most jaded Potter non-believer, the film makes no bones about being the sixth in a series.

In fact, Half-Blood Prince feels like the most grown-up Potter film yet when it comes to the menace of the bad guys. They're everywhere, and they're casually evil. While the death of Cedric Diggory in Goblet of Fire was a stunner, Half-Blood Prince carries a constant presence of malice, and it feels like any kid could be killed at any moment.

So it sounds like we're being made up to after the last feature, which was terrible by any means, but in my opinion terribly rushed. Still, I'll be anxious to read other reviews as we all know the online community often feels one way about a franchise, while the rest of the world sometimes has a different opinion.

The kids all sat down and voiced their opinions about the Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen trailer. While it's hard to believe that the target demographic doesn't cotton to the Transforming robots Hollywood spent a lot of money on for them, I do feel as if a few of them are missing the point.

Ben Sassoon, 17: "I can't say this got my hopes up. It's just a lot of explosions."

Jasmine Jafari, 15: "I wasn't sure I even knew what the movie was about until halfway through the trailer, and I probably know more than most people, since I have a little brother who's into Transformers. I think he'd be a lot more interested in the movie than me. It just felt pretty senseless."

Hmmm...did they not see that Megan Fox on the motorcycle in the denim underwear/shorts? I'm straight and even I turn into a 15-year-old boy around the likes of her. One of them kind of gets it:

Ben: "This reminds me of why I'm not a big fan of Michael Bay. He keeps making the same movie, over and over again, as if he hopes someday he'll get it right."

No, Ben this is why you love Michael Bay, because it doesn't matter how drunk you get before or during, you don't need to pay attention. It all ends up in a sparkly pretty explosion followed by one cleavage shot from the leading lady. I'll buy you the booze and leave it in the garage, so mom doesn't see, it'll be like watching it with fresh, hazy eyes. Just enjoy the shiny exploding robots for what they are - kids these days.

Read the rest of the reviews over at L.A. Times.

Little Brother is set five minutes into the future, when terrorists blow up San Francisco's Bay Bridge and the BART tunnel. This brings about a huge crackdown, with tons of American citizens being rounded up and imprisoned in a secret prison on Treasure Island - or shipped off to foreign countries to be tortured.

The novel's main character, Marcus, is a snarky teen hacker with authority issues. And that's before he gets locked up and abused by the Department of Homeland Security, and his friend Darryl disappears for good. That event transforms Marcus from a minor-league hacker to a major dissident and subversive element.

Marcus is a classic Doctorow protagonist: snarky and pissed off, but with an amazingly tender heart lurking just below the jagged armor. He launches a quixotic crusade to make the American government spooks pay, which starts out by "jamming" the government's attempts to profile people based on their travel and purchases, and gradually grows into far-reaching civil disobedience, and a massive network of young people communicating via hacked xBoxes.

Many, if not most, young-adult science fiction novels take place in a dystopian or post-apocalyptic setting, where the grown-ups have long since stopped asking questions about the evil overlords and their excessive overlording. The twisted genius of Doctorow's novel is that it starts out in our world, more or less, and then shows how easily and quickly it transforms into a dystopia.

The "Panopticon," in which observation and spying are constant companions, becomes an alarming reality in Little Brother. It turns out all of those devices that make your life easier, like transit fast passes, credit cards, and RFID-enabled tags, allow the government to track your every movement. And anyone whose movements falls outside normal patterns can be arrested - or simply made to disappear - unless you can "prove" that you're not a terrorist.

And the adult characters in Little Brother quickly become inured to this crazy surveillance regime, accepting it as a necessary evil to stop those awful terrorists from destroying our way of life. Marcus' dad, in particular, goes from being a critic of the government to an apologist for the Homeland Security fascists. And adults who do encourage dissent, such as Marcus' Social Studies teacher, tend to lose their jobs or vanish some other way.

The other thing that sticks in your mind after reading Little Brother is the alarming depiction of propaganda gone insane. Marcus' version of Dumbledore's Army becomes so successful, they start getting condemned on Fox News and in the newspapers, and in the mass media generally, and no matter how media-savvy Marcus tries to be, he only makes things worse. At one point, he does a "press conference" in a virtual world, where he tries to explain his viewpoint, and the press only twists his words around:

I'd blown it, somehow. The press had come to my press-conference and concluded that we were terrorists or terrorist dupes. The worst was the reporter on Fox News, who had apparently shown up anyway, and who devoted a ten-minute commentary to us, talking about our "criminal treason." Her killer line, repeated on every news-outlet I found, was:

"They say they don't have a name. I've got one for them. Let's call these spoiled children Cal-Quaeda. They do the terrorists' work on the home front. When — not if, but when — California gets attacked again, these brats will be as much to blame as the House of Saud."

Leaders of the anti-war movement denounced us as fringe elements. One guy went on TV to say that he believed we had been fabricated by the DHS to discredit them.

The title, Little Brother, comes from the idea that young people can become "little brothers" keeping tabs on "Big Brother," but it kept reminding me of this classic 80s song:

And meanwhile, Doctorow doesn't neglect the "love story" portion of the young-adult formula. Through his rabble-rousing, Marcus meets the defiant Ange, who's just as radical and brilliant as he is, and they bond over spicy food, loud music, hacking and civil disobedience. Compared to the Orwellian nightmares of the main storyline, the Marcus-Ange love story feels a bit less urgent, but it still has moments of genuine sweetness and gives us another reason to root for Marcus in his struggle.

You can tell Doctorow was a staffer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the techie civil liberties organization. He mentions EFF a number of times in the novel, and the book is full of helpful little asides where Marcus explains the ins and outs of surveillance, hacking and computer security.

Major spoiler: The only real problem I had with Little Brother was the happy ending, which felt a bit forced. It actually reminded me of the fake happy ending in Terry Gilliam's Brazil, and for a moment I thought Doctorow was doing something similar - I thought Marcus was fantasizing this happy ending while he was being tortured by government goons. I felt a bit let down when I realized the happy ending was "real," and there's a part of me that still imagines the book's narration panning back from Marcus' comatose face, as someone says "He's gone."

But generally, Little Brother represents a great step forward in the burgeoning subgenre of dystopian young-adult SF. It brings a greater degree of political sophistication, geekiness and civil disobedience to a genre that was already serving up a milder dose of rebellion. After this, no YA novel will be able to get away with watering down its youthful revolution.

Little Brother was nominated for Hugo and Nebula Awards. Read more of io9's coverage of 2009's book award nominees here.

Crank: High Voltage is the sequel to Jason Statham's frenetic sex-and-violence vehicle Crank. The premise of the first flick is that the hyperactive, superstrong street scum Chelios (Statham) gets injected with an evil Chinese gang drug. If he ever lets his adrenaline fall below psychotic levels, he'll die. Though he falls out of a helicopter at the end of Crank, he manages to survive into this sequel in grand videogame style. Some Chinese gang dudes peel him off the pavement, give him open heart surgery in a massage parlor (managing to get only a little cigarette ash into his chest cavity), steal his mega-heart, and fit him out with a total artificial heart powered by a laptop battery.

Of course, Chelios is awake during his open-heart surgery. He seems pretty content to just chill on the table until the doctors let it slip that the next organ they're going to harvest is his monstrously huge cock. That's when he gets up, kills everybody in sight, and sets out on his new quest: To get his awesome heart back. His first bit of intel comes from the lone remaining gangster after the slaughterfest. The guy is begging for his life on his hands and knees, but he won't tell who has the heart. So Chelios dunks the tip of his semi-automatic gun in oil, and jams it deep in the guy's ass.

This movie is some fucked up shit, yo. And it's glorious. This is the videogame-amped, YouTube-poisoned, porn-soaked, gang-controlled future that suburban America fears most. And so it's nothing short of cathartic to see every pop nightmare unscroll before our eyes in a lurid parody like the best dirty joke that Larry Flynt ever dreamed up. Crank 2 is thrilling because the filmmakers have blasted away their self-censorship mechanisms and let flow the unexpurgated contents of their blackest (and silliest) hearts.

Chelios' Los Angeles is pretty much the same semi-imaginary city where Grand Theft Auto takes place, a world of gangbangers and whores who exist entirely to be killed, and hopefully in a way that is memorably bloody. Just when you think the action can't get any more fucked up, Chelios will follow the gangsters who've got his heart into a strip club. Where a guy is being tortured by having his elbows chopped off. And strippers who've been shot in the chest run through the club screaming as silicon goo streams down their stomachs and their breasts deflate.

To keep his heart battery from running down, Chelios has to keep shocking himself. His underground heart surgeon, doing medical research while boning yet another hooker, checks in on the cell phone every once in a while to dispense heart-maintenance advice to our beleaguered hero. Try rebooting it by clamping jumper cables to your nipples. Try tazering your cock. Try creating a bunch of friction by rubbing another person! That last order ends well, with Chelios fucking his girlfriend (the hilarious Amy Smart) on the racetrack while a bunch of horses run over their heads, flashing their horsey cocks.

Meanwhile, we take several gratuitous detours into sex-violence slapstick, as Chelios has to cross a picket line of striking porn stars (yes there's a cameo from Ron Jeremy), and meets up with a gay sidekick who has "full body Tourettes" (WTF?) but later saves Chelios' ass with his giant gang of butch queers. No surprise that this movie exhibits Grand Theft Auto's idea of multiculturalism, too: Everybody (including the white dude) is a racist stereotype; everybody is a sexist stereotype; and everybody is equal in their sleazy, homicidal abandon. It's Jackass Darwinism - survival of the biggest fucking asshole.

Eventually it turns out that a Chinese gang leader – played with parodic racist aplomb by David Carradine – has installed Chelios' heart in his own chest. So it's a race to get the pumper out of Carradine's chest and back into Chelios. Things get even more science fictional as our characters head into a showdown on Catalina Island that plays like a hellish cross between the movies of Ron Jeremy and Eli Roth. And by that I mean: OMGWTFBBQ.

I've been accused before of being immoral for enjoying movies like Crank 2 – for admiring their savage honesty, their brutal parodic punch. There is something undeniably disturbing about a story that is so plainly intended to degrade every character in it. And yet that is its charm. Nobody tried to excuse the sex and violence here in the service of art or politics or some kind of warning about the nasty future our terrible videogame habits will lead to. But at the same time, Crank 2 does recognize its own self-destructive sensibility. That's why the movie's refrain – repeated in many languages, by many people - is "Fuck you Chelios!"

With the aid of a Vulcan delivery guy, Original Spock Leonard Nimoy, the lucky members at Ain't It Cool News' Fantastic Fest viewed JJ Abrams' Star Trek film in its entirety. The reviews are pouring in with praise for Abrams, but also a few mentions of some rough parts, Bana's portrayal of the movie's villain, Nero, being one of them. Also, some cite a lack of character building for the entire cast. But these are mere drops in the bucket of an overall monsoon of praise for Star Trek.

Cinemablend:

The new Star Trek movie is amazing- easily the best Trek movie since The Wrath of Khan, and a veritable feast of sight and sound: A captivating adventure that grabs you from the first and doesn't let go. The effects are staggering, finally what the stories have deserved so richly. There are enough huge fireballs, shattering explosions and exciting fights to go around...I admit I was skeptical- I was not prepared to care about this universe and these characters again, after the crushing mediocrity that they had become. I can be skeptical no more, though. This is a fantastic movie it's own right, one I would definitely recommend to Trekkie and new fan alike.

Quint From AICN

I like the world (or maybe universe is a better term considering the material) that Abrams and his team has created here. I like the cast he assembled, I like the way this new universe turns some old Trek landmarks on their heads, while keeping true to what's really important to each character … Without exception, I think the first 45 minutes of the movie is rock solid. The second act has a few problems, the biggest of which seemed to be a sequence of check-listing, making sure all the characters we know and love are on the bridge and the way they introduce Nimoy is a great hero moment"

Abrams' style is consistent in the film. There's a reality to the sci-fi, but he doesn't ignore the awe-inspiring sci-fi vistas and characters we want to see. He's able to populate the universe with beings that could have walked out of the cantina on Mos Eisley, but are just like the Vulcans in that they do their jobs and are just part of the reality, even if they have huge eyes or crazy Don Post-ish heads. I liked that, outside of two or three instances (my favorite being the usage of the green-skinned girl), Abrams keeps all that in the background, giving the universe another layer...

My personal input would be to focus on the adventure. They have now firmly established the world, the characters and everything is primed for the big adventure film. They need an iconic villain. Eric Bana's Nero is fine for the purposes of this story, but they need someone to challenge Kirk and his crew… not just in strength, but in a mental game, which is why people love Khan so much. He was a smart motherfucker.

Star Trek "Virgin" Cole Abaius from Film School Rejects:

This is a fantastic movie. It's pacing is rapid-fire, the action is larger-than-life and raises blood pressure with ease, and the characters come to life in a very cool way. Overall, it's an exciting flick that is shot beautifully - featuring a cast that carries all the weight necessarily to create some enduring figures to root for. A near-perfect Summer tentpole blockbuster.

As far as performances go, Chris Pine is outstanding. He's the embodiment of a conflicted soul, transcending the cliche of the troubled rebel with a greater destiny. His delivery manages to give depth while maintaining the cocky veneer. Zachary Quinto is brilliant - creating an emotionless man without being robotic, using nuances to hint at something far more dynamic lurking just below his stark delivery. Their chemistry is worth the ticket price alone.

Rodney Perkins' "Thoughts" From Twitch Film:

Abrams' film is a very entertaining and reverential take on the Star Trek mythos. The acting and casting are spot on. The story mixes old and new elements of the Star Trek universe. The effects are breathtaking. Some people will inevitably nitpick this film but J.J. Abrams' new work is as good as (and arguably better than) most of the Star Trek movies that preceded it.

Writes the New Yorker's Anthony Lane:

The bad news about "Watchmen" is that it grinds and squelches on for two and a half hours, like a major operation. The good news is that you don't have to stay past the opening credit sequence-easily the highlight of the film.

If you think that's harsh, look at New York Magazine's take:

Alan Moore refused (in advance) to put his name on the movie, which must have hurt Snyder and company terribly; they've made the most reverent adaptation of a graphic novel ever. But this kind of reverence kills what it seeks to preserve. The movie is embalmed.

Newsweek's Devin Gordon goes even further, hinting that the fanboys who now praise Watchmen may eventually come to view it as another Phantom Menace.

Says EW's Owen Gleiberman:

Watchmen isn't boring, but as a fragmented sci-fi doomsday noir, it remains as detached from the viewer as it is from the zeitgeist.

And perhaps harshest of all, AP's Christy Lemire taunts the fanboys who may love this movie:

Hey, fanboys. Yeah, you guys, the ones who flooded my inbox with e-mails after I trashed Zack Snyder's "300," wishing birth defects on my unborn children and suggesting that perhaps my husband isn't - ahem - keeping me satisfied.

Yes, I've read "Watchmen." I understand why it matters culturally, why it's considered revolutionary in its exploration of flawed superheroes, why it moved you. It moved me, too. And still - or, rather, because of that - I found director Snyder's adaptation hugely disappointing, faithful as it is to the graphic novel.

And meanwhile, the movie blogs and nerd outlets are ecstatic over the same film that's causing so much pain to New York Magazine.

Says Ain't It Cool News:

I WATCHED THE FUCKING WATCHMEN AND FUCKING LOVED IT! It isn't the perfect 5 hour wet dream that I always dreamt of, but I love it. I can't wait to see the dialogue you all have with this film, with each other and with us here at AICN. This was fucking awesome!

Says CHUD:

If nothing else, Zack Snyder's Watchmen demands praise as an awe-inspiring achievement... It's a remarkable film, and an uncompromising one. It's the sort of movie that major studios are simply not supposed to be making now that the 1970s are over... A glorious, epic, exciting, mind blowing piece of art.

According to Cinemablend:

As a movie Watchmen is every bit as risky, edgy, and aspiring as it ought to be. As a bonus it's also really, really good.

UGO:

On many levels, Watchmen is a masterpiece. Visually striking from its first to last frame, Snyder's adaptation, in my opinion, even surpasses the source material.

(Although the review goes on to point out a lot of problems in the film, but then winds up saying it's basically great.)

The blog response isn't unanimous. JoBlo gives the movie a lukewarm review, for example. (My own Watchmen review will be up tomorrow, when I've had time to ponder it. Suffice to say, for now, both the New Yorker and Ain't It Cool News are right.)

Given his recent record, reader expectations for "We'll Always Have Paris" might understandably be on the low side — especially given the cover, which features a grinning Bradbury holding a glowing book, Photoshopped in front of the Eiffel Tower.
And therein lies a happy surprise: Throw those expectations out the window and get ready to enjoy a fresh draft of stories the way only Bradbury can write them.

All of a sudden, I'm curious to read some Bradbury again. [L.A. Times]

Cold Souls:
Paul Giamatti plays himself — a famous actor, but struggling with an internal crisis. Looking for sweet relief, Giamatti checks out a New York soul extraction facility. But after he has his ever loving soul removed, angsty calamity ensues.

Cinematical on Cold Souls:

Here, though, he [Giamatti] gives what may be his best performance, stretching to play several variations of himself, and manages several seemingly incompatible things — investing real heart into what's essentially a character defined by a science-fiction device, finding real emotion in surreal inventions and yet giving his everyday moments a deft, askew energy.... Cold Souls looks and feels like a Charlie Kaufman film, but it's somehow slipperier and yet simpler, more complex and yet more direct. Part of the pleasure of Cold Souls is that as we watch Paul Giamatti struggle to understand his soul, we can't help but cast a glance towards our own.

Variety on Cold Souls:

An amusing slice of existential whimsy with an Eastern European bent, Cold Souls posits a world in which humans can have their souls extracted and implanted in each others' bodies. It's the sort of idea one can imagine Charlie Kaufman running wild with, but Sophie Barthes' writing-helming debut is too well-behaved and conventional, stylistically and metaphysically, to achieve the desired levels of creative lunacy. Marketing will need to emphasize the pic's goofy premise and Paul Giamatti's enjoyable performance to overcome cool but respectful critical response.

Moon: Lonely and anger management-challenged space miner Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) lives by himself on a far-away moon, harvesting resources. Comforted only by Kevin Spacey's voice as the home robot, the miner awaits the end of his contract, until space madness and the company's ulterior motives force Sam to come face to face with a scary reality. But what did the critics think?

Film School Rejects On Moon:

While not perfect by any means, Moon is yet another impressive work of independent science fiction. In which we have a young director with an ambitious vision, a perfectly cast lead and the creativity to bring it to life without having to work on a Michael Bay-sized budget... if there is any reason to see this movie, it is that you should once again behold the brilliance that is Sam Rockwell. The man gives a remarkable performance, taking the film from a well-executed indie to a potentially very memorable entry into the sci-fi genre

Slashfilm on Moon:

Produced on a low budget by first time filmmaker Duncan Jones, Moon makes great use of realitic sets, a remote control robot, old school miniature work, and even some CG. Like last year’s Sleep Dealer, I’m convinced that Moon is at the beginning of a new renaissance of indie sci-fi feature films which will challenge Hollywood’s big budget
computer generated spectacles.

Grace: A young pregnant woman loses her baby while still in her womb. She insists on carrying the stillborn child to term. After the birth, little Grace comes back to life — but with a taste for blood. Paul Solet's deeply disturbing film is already making waves when audience members passed out at the Egyptian screening.

Dread Central On Grace:

Grace is very much the antidote to what plagues most of the horror genre today. For those who are tired of the endless remakes and reincarnations of overseas films, Grace very well could be the movie you need to see to restore your faith in the idea that there is still an artistic vision within the horror genre. I know it has restored mine.

Bloody Disgusting On Grace:

At the Sundance screening I attended, the audience whooped, hollered, and screamed, and two men reportedly fainted during the show. It’s true that Solet takes the audience on a twisted ride down a very dark birth canal, but is it dark and twisted enough? Sundance audiences may scream and faint at the likes of Grace, but the die-hard horror fan will be merely amused by Solet’s bloodthirsty baby shenanigans. Without much of a plot driving the action, the film’s success depends solely on mood and tone, and Grace, although diverting, isn’t quite haunting enough to make a lasting impact.

Dead Snow: Bring on the undead Nazi zombies! This Norwegian flick follows a group of vacationing snow bunnies to the mountains, where their crazy partying awakens a pack of undead Nazis. Blood, blood and more blood. And snow.
Fearnet on Dead Snow:

Although not exactly all that scary, Dead Snow earns big points for enthusiasm, creativity, and a powerful devotion to all things ultra-splattery...Dead Snow is little more than a 90-minute excuse for some wintry wildness and subzero slaughter, but most of the highlights are spot-on amusing, and the finest moments of gore 'n' gristle go down surprisingly well.

Movieblog on Dead Snow:

The filmmakers used over 450 litres of blood to create a horror film that harkens back to the feel of those created in the 1980s: little substance and a lot of slashing. The film is spiced with a number of great moments of homage to other horror films.

The Clone Returns Home: An astronaut dies on a mission, but never fear — he's got a clone, who can be imprinted with his memories. Unfortunately his clone replacement malfunctions, and is stuck on a tragic memory from the dead astronaut's youth. The clone escapes to find answers and solace from his burdened memories, much to the dismay of the ailing widow and the clone company.

Variety on Clone:

Bewitchingly intense low-budgeter has few special effects but achieves a glossy sheen, thanks to excellent lensing and well-chosen architectural backdrops. Attachment of Wim Wenders as exec producer will act as pic's passport to fests. Deliberate pace may deter those not already discouraged by the bland title, but careful handling may reap commercial prospects, especially from Asia buffs.

Additional reporting from Julia Carusillo

From the moment the movie begins with young Speed Racer in elementary school spacing out during a test by drawing pictures of cars, you know the movie isn't just going to be a lot of empty visuals and "oh look we can make live action look cartoony." For when Speed draws, the next thing you see is him zooming through a landscape that looks just like his drawing — it's a lovely, quick way of showing us the inside of a kid's imagination, as he draws himself crossing the finish line and lets out a "crowd goes wild" noise in the middle of class.

There's a lot of stuff like this scene in the movie, where kids are going nuts over pop culture — and it works. The kid excitement in Speed Racer is genuinely infectious. You'll find yourself whooping along with Speed's little brother Spridle and chimp Chim Chim when they watch anime on TV and suddenly jump inside it, fighting each other and the spikey mechas with bright CGI lines careening around their bodies, and their faces transfigured by crazed, abandoned childish delight. Maybe it's just because a lot of us who grew up with nutty, zoomy pop culture like original Japanese cartoon Speed Racer still have the walls of our minds painted with crayon-bright explosions. Whatever the reason, the Wachowskis have hit a sweet, goofy nerve here and they play it well.

The plot of the flick couldn't be simpler. Nice kid Speed Racer wants nothing more than to compete in the big leagues of racing. His family runs Racer Motors, a tiny independent car design company that turns out beauties like the Mach 5 (and later, the ultra-awesome Mach 6). After he wins his first big race, giant mega-corp businessman Royalton tries to become Speed's sponsor, promising him all the riches in the world. But Speed turns him down because he wants to stay independent with Racer Motors. That's when Royalton gets ugly and says racing is all about money and power and Speed can never hope to compete without corporate sponsorship.

Will the love of family and indie production values be able to topple big business and evil corporate overlords? And who is the mysterious Racer X who keeps helping him fight the evil Royalton thugs? That's what Speed Racer is all about. There's a heaping dose of Matrix-style politics here, and even a long speech from Royalton about the nature of power that totally felt like a satiric take on the Architect's speech in Matrix Reloaded. Luckily, we don't linger too long in the chambers of philosophy and instead head out to the glowing, crazy, hallucinogenic race track.

As I said earlier, you won't be shocked to know that the visuals in Speed Racer are seriously awesome. You've probably seen some previews by now, so you know the cars swirl and shimmy and the citiscapes are full of dazzling rays of light. Nothing on screen remains unaltered by CGI: it's augmented reality top to bottom, and the attention to detail is sometimes a little overwhelming. What may startle you, though, is the feeling you got watching The Matrix for the first time and said, "Holy fuck what the hell I have never seen that before and it looks crazy fucking great." There are a lot of things in Speed Racer your eyeballs will be experiencing for the first time — cool ways of composing scenes to make them look like cartoons, awesome concept design, and ninja fight scenes that are both exciting and silly enough for kids.

Those silly fight scenes are the other really cool thing about this flick, especially for the usually grim-and-dirty Wachowskis. A whole lot of Speed Racer is pure CGI slapstick and it's funny as hell. Blink and you'll miss some zany shit like a crazed Segway race in Royalton's tower, evil racing Vikings doing their evil Viking thang, and ongoing hijinks with Spridle and Chim Chim. Normally, I hate cute kids and monkeys in flicks, but (dare I say it) the Wachowskis did the right thing with them here. We get just enough monkey poop, and then we're back on the mesmerizing race track.

As somebody who watched the Matrix trilogy more times than I care to admit, one of the interesting things about Speed Racer was realizing that maybe those previous movies were actually a lot more tongue-in-cheek than they seemed. Or maybe the Wachowskis have finally grown a sense of humor about their previous deadly-serious, ninja-laden efforts. While Speed Racer may not go down in history like Matrix did, I think it marks a hopeful turning point in the Wachowskis' careers. If they can keep successfully switching gears like this, I think they have a lot more awesome in store for us in years to come.

In the meantime, they've given you a giant dose of fun and flash to start your summer right.

Speed Racer opens tonight.

If we'd gotten to see this look at the secret origins of Torchwood much, much earlier, the whole show might have been better. Either the other episodes of season one would have actually been better, thanks to this episode clarifying the show and its characters. Or at the very least, they would have seemed better because we'd already care about the characters and the backstory.

Before anybody else jumps in and points it out, I know "Fragments" is a total retread of the Firefly episode where Serenity breaks down and Mal gets shot and then we see flashbacks of how the crew came together. But "Out Of Gas" was one of the best Firefly eps, and it seems to have inspired a similarly great Torchwood installment.

It's just sad that this is the penultimate Torchwood episode, instead of the second or third. Yes, I know the show isn't cancelled. But if all the rumors and half-announcements are to be believed, the show is getting such a drastic makeover in its third season that it might as well be a different show. This is the first time I actually really wanted to get to know these characters and this universe better.

Each of the four main characters — apart from the already overexposed Gwen — gets a lengthy flashback showing how he/she ended up joining Torchwood. And none of the flashbacks were quite what I expected. I had a pretty clear idea of how they were going to go, and this episode actually managed to subvert my expectations. Mostly by showing me a different side of the characters. We got to see Tosh being a resourceful spy, Owen actually showing human emotions, and Jack not having all the answers for a change. Ianto was still pretty much Ianto, but that's a good thing.

Because all of these characters managed to surprise me and show me different facets, I found myself caring about them much more. I still don't really care about Gwen, but I do care about Rhys. So she gets some emotional attachment by proxy.

The other reason this episode excited me so much is because it helped me understand what Torchwood is about. Why the organization originally existed, and why it exists now. I didn't realize until just now how frustrating the show's muddle backstory actually is.

Here's what we already knew: Queen Victoria founded Torchwood in the Doctor Who episode "Tooth And Claw," because Rose and the Doctor giggled too much during a werewolf attack. Torchwood's original charter includes keeping an eye out for the Doctor. When we next see Torchwood, it's the early 21st century and it has a huge London headquarters, and it's an imperialist organization that's tampering with forces it can't comprehend.

So how do we get from that set-up to Jack's cozy little gang in Cardiff? The newest episode finally shows us how. We get to see the sadistic Victorian ladies of the original Torchwood recruiting the devil-may-care Jack, and then around 1999 one of the members of Torchwood Cardiff becomes distraught at the way things are going and shoots himself and his colleagues. So Jack severs all ties with Torchwood's main London branch and sets about remolding the organization into a genuine force for good. All of this is backstory that you could have gleaned from the occasional aside during previous episodes, but it made a huge difference to see it actually laid out.

So that makes two great Torchwood episodes in a row. I'd say the season has been about half-and-half great and mediocre, which makes the season finale, airing April 4, the tie-breaker. Sadly, I don't hold up much hope, because it's about Spike coming back and going on a killing spree because he wants Captain Jack to pay attention to him. And it features the return of Captain Jack's long-lost kid brother. But this episode pleasantly surprised me, so maybe the next one will too.

Says Hindu News Service:

Failed by a lackluster script, CJ7 fails to deliver heartwarming family humor, but it's redeemed by its computer-animated star — the lovable extra-terrestrial dog-like creature CJ7, which the movie is named after.

Online fan reviews are even harsher, saying things like: "There was no plot." Or "I almost asked for my money back." (Although that second commenter warmed up to it.) And then one science fiction fan comments that the alien creature weirdly doesn't add much to the movie other than being cute:

It was clearly meant to be little more than a humorous piece, lighthearted and fun. It achieved that. But, as a fan of science fiction and fantasy, I found it interesting that the film could get away with such a thin development of the alien creature, and old-fashioned style spaceships.

(Note: We're not judging these things on their own merits as entertainment, or science. We're looking at how much we hated their versions of the future.)

The Invasion. In this movie's future, we encounter extraterrestrial life forms, and they're like Prozac parasites. They make everybody ridiculously well-adjusted and devoid of affect. Many people complained about the new upbeat ending, but it would have been great if science had overcome the parasites in a clever, believable way. Instead, we got the magic tacked-on rescue, followed by the easy miracle cure. Blah.

Spider-Man 3. Yet another movie about an alien parasite that changes your behavior. This one causes extreme singing and dancing foolishness, plus bad emo hair. The struggle with the Venom parasite, so intense and disturbing in the comics, becomes campy and dumb. And not unlike Invasion, SM3 has a pat -feeling resolution to the parasite dilemma. Sure, it makes sense that our future holds struggles against behavior-modding creatures, but do they have to be so boring?

Bionic Woman. This TV show should be just our flavor of near-future dystopia. Normally, we love an evil brain-sucking corporation that implants its technology into a woman and then believes it owns her. Unfortunately, BW just isn't bleak or brutal enough to be a fun dystopia. Instead, it's just wishy-washy. The bionics actually make Jaime wimpier instead of stronger. And the evil corporate overlord starts baby-sitting Jaime's sister and washing her dishes. Why?

Chuck. Another NBC TV show about a human who absorbs spy technology, another boring bleak future. Chuck gets the whole CIA/NSA spy database in his brain, but the spymasters who want to use him are ruthless and scheme to murder him as soon as they can line up a replacement. Too bad Chuck is such an annoying squealer that we root for him to die so we can get Chuck 2.0 instead.

I Am Legend. This movie belongs on the "worst" list because of that horrible tacked-on ending, which made The Invasion look like Citizen Kane. First of all, the science-magic device of the mutant's blood containing the anti-plague serum isn't explained at all. And then the salvation of the human race turns out to be this crappy little whitebread New England town, walled in against the heathen plague vampires. Bring back the Partridge Family plague survivors from Omega Man!

Y: The Last Man. In previous years, this comic-book series would have been on our "best futures" list. But it gets on the "worst futures" list for 2007 because of that bogus explanation for how all the men died. Sure, every man on the planet dropping dead at once was never going to have a totally logical explanation. But the explanation we get is just nonsensical, mystical and weirdly anti-science. (There's an alternate explanation involving the Israeli military and a botched bio-weapon, but it's discounted.)

Facebook's Death Grip. We'll all have too many Facebook friends to cope with in the future, net-preneur Jason Calacanis told the Washington Post. Now that Calacanis has thousands of Facebook friends, he just can't deal with all the friend requests and other trivia. So he's outsourcing his friend-management to an intern. In a few years, we'll all be in the "death grip" of overwhelming friend management that will prevent us having a real social life and make us hate our friends. Sign us up!

Future Files: The Next 50 Years by Richard Watson. The reviews and interviews of this book alone make it sound hilarious. For starters, in the future we'll have "ethical bankruptcy" to let us launder our reputations, because all our mistakes will be exposed online. And we'll suffer from "time-famine" and "space-anxiety." D00d! Anti-globalism will crush the European Union. The items in your fridge will talk to each other and formulate a possible dinner menu. Freud, Einstein and Darwin may well be debunked. But global warming won't be much trouble. My favorite part: he doesn't actually know what Friendfinder is. He thinks it's a service that tells you where your friends are currently located. Right. And Alt.com is all about tracking alternate timelines.

The Dark Space by Marianne De Pierres. This space-opera novel takes place in a dark future where humans have colonized Orion. And it falls back on one of my pet peeves: the far-future society that somehow mimics our own past. The human settlers on the planet Araldis somehow live in a crappy copy of Renaissance Italy. Except that it's all cyber, so instead of saying "bambino," they just say "'bino." Which we kept thinking was short for "albino." Oh, and an outer-space God speaks in 1337-speak.

Heroes. And finally, another NBC TV show. (Poor suffering NBC.) We didn't hate everything about "volume two," but the visit to the evil plague future was boring. And the hero-visits-horrible-future trick already happened in season one. This time around, it felt really peremptory, like "here's your horrendous death-future, so suck it bitch." Plus it would be worth losing 98 percent of the world's population to get rid of that boring Irish woman.

First, in Monday's episode, we had the classic "leaving advanced tech in the past" plot, only with a clever twist. Dan drops a 2007-vintage digital camera in 1984. When he returns to the present, people are using fancy "nano-tech" computers and smart paper. And Dan has a daughter instead of a son, because this fancy technology failed on the night he was supposed to conceive his son. The glimpses of an alternate 2007 with more advanced tech are pretty cool-looking. It also showcases one thing Journeyman has done well all along: showing how time travel creates alternate timelines.

Then on Wednesday, we met Evan the veteran time-jumper. Evan has been time-traveling for 15 years, until he's ended up a total wreck, trapped in a mental institution. After a maniac shot his wife, he kept going back in time and trying to "fix" the problem, but it only got nastier and nastier. So finally, Evan changed history so he never met his wife, leaving himself more broken-hearted than ever. It reminded me of a sadder, darker version of The Man Who Folded Himself. Evan also warned that meeting his own past self was what triggered his total mental collapse.

Finally, there's the scifi standby of the shadowy conspiracy. "They" are watching Professor Elliot Langley, the scientist who has extremely vague knowledge about Dan's time traveling. This was the least satisfying part of the episode, because it was our last chance to hear some answers about Dan's situation. And instead, we got wheel-spinning. But even this disappointment only made us wish Journeyman would have a new lease on life.

The good news: in a night of reruns and crappy reality programming, Journeyman finished second among adults 18-49 in the ratings. It came in third overall, with a respectable 4.6 million viewers. So maybe there's hope, especially if the strike drags on long enough to prevent anybody making new series pilots.

Turns out there's a separate Cylon faction that wants to protect something called The Guardian. We'll be seeing more of this Cylon civil war in season four. And a Cylon "God guy" makes some dire predictions of what will happen if the humans follow Kara Thrace, who is referred to as "the harbinger of the Apocalypse for the human race."

Battlestar Galactica: Razor Is Amazing [Eclipse Magazine]