I started doing my daily writing partly as fun and partly to see if I could do it. I now know I can write a novel because I’ve finished one, albeit a poorly written one, but I did it none the less. I’ve also found if I force myself to write and I stay focused I moves along at a pretty descent pace for someone with no training, but I’ve also found the opposite. If I skip a day it can easily become two or three days. The more days skipped the harder it is to get motivated.

The other issues I’m finding is I’m a night owl. I prefer to stay up late an sleep in. I choose 9:00 pm until I finish as my writing time and at first it was great. By the time I finished my 1,000 ish words for the night I was wiped out mentally and ready for bed. What I didn’t expect is my mind is like a muscle and once I started working it nightly it got stronger and so after getting the 1,000 words down for three of four weeks instead of mental fatigue I would lay down for bed and my mind was still working on the story and not allowing me to rest. Since I have a day job I needed to get up for work and found many nights I was getting less than five hours of sleep and making me fell like crap.

The past week I’ve found it nearly impossible to make it through a night of sleep. Even after going to bed at nine o’clock one evening with my alarm set for seven thirty the next morning, I only made it until two before something inside woke me up and wouldn’t allow for rest.  After three hours of browsing the beast I call the internet I finally felt my eyes where heavy enough to find rest and I managed a 3 hour nap before I pulled myself from bed.

Now that I’ve poured out my guilty confession of lazy writing I plan to attempt to focus and get my writing going tonight. Hopefully I’ll report back next week with 10,000 more words on novel two.

Guess I should get to it, because I feel the lead sand from the Sandman’s dusting already taking hold tonight.

After watching the advertisement a second viewing I learned of the small print at the bottom of the screen in the font sized perfect for a dollhouse storybook. What does the type at the bottom of the screen say? “Driving performed by a professional driver on a close course. Do not attempt,” is what it says often enough but I’m talking about the other fine print television subscript, “Prices many vary in Alaska and Hawaii.”

After discovering that bit of information I thought, “huh, that sucks.” So at that point I figured well it is part of living so far from the rest of the country, and so even at a young age I started buying into this belief that by living Alaska it was okay to charge more for a item.

Once I got older I started noticing some things had a set price. Books in particular had the price printed right on the back and more importantly to myself was comic books price was there on the front of every issue. I realized then that I wasn’t paying anymore for a book or a comic then anyone else, and that somehow made me feel a little more connected to my contiguous state brethren.

My next discovery of the shameful practice of price gouging the folks of the far north or the island folks was for these order now, $19.95 and we’ll through in a second one free guys. Everyone has seen these last night ads for these items that in the brightness of day your brain says that is ridicules, but something happens in the dark of night, when your brain sees the horrific flashing price getting slashed from hundreds of dollars down to that safe price just below the twenty dollar mark. It also seems your brain has checked out long enough not to question that if it is the last one you’ll ever need, then why do they throwing in a second one for free? You only need to pay for the shipping and handling.

That’s when I noticed the small print on that stuff. These guys have a shipping and handling mark up  for Alaska and Hawaii. I know that a first class stamp from the post office doesn’t have an Alaskan rate. I’ve bought stamps in Alaska to write family in the “lower 48″ and while on summer vacation staying with family in Tennessee I bought stamps to write letters to my mom. What did I find? They cost the same. Talking to the local post office I found that the postal rates had set rates for the United States. It didn’t care where you where mailing your letter or package. United States Postal Service (USPS) had flat rate and didn’t care that I lived in Alaska. Of course the small print here is USPS has a lot of different rates for there services and some are cheaper to some places than the other. I haven’t talked to anyone in the postal services in years about their rates and it isn’t like I did research to write this paper.

I digress, with the knowledge that USPS has flat shipping rates I wondered why if the shipping should have been the same price way was handling to Alaska more. In the end I just figured it was a way for the company to make a few more dollars off people who where far away and didn’t have the choices others might. I mean it wasn’t like we could just drive over to the next stat and see if their stores had a better deal, we where pretty much stuck with whatever we where told the price was.

Things changed in the 1990′s. The internet opened my up to stores all across the U.S. I never had access too. Although often they had higher shipping rates to Alaska and Hawaii the cost of their goods where normally much less then off the shelf in our local stores. Plus more and more large chain stores came to town. We got our first K-mart and Wal-mart in the early 90′s and the big boy book stores like Boarders and Barnes and Noble came to town. Sure I saw many of the small local folks close up shop when the big guys came to town but as a customer I loved finally having prices that didn’t seem so over inflated.

So now we have the modern age where many of my purchases come from internet sites the costs of items are lower than ever. Many of the online guys use shipping methods other than USPS and so I understand they have a tiered service for the miles something is shipped and although in a world where my Amazon purchases are often shipped to me for free, there are still companies that feel a need to jack up the shipping costs to Alaska.

The lasted price hikes that I’ve found on several trips to one of my favorite money waster stores Best Buy. First I must say I love Best Buy and shop there much too often. Even becoming a Silver member on their price club prize club thing that everyone seems to have these days. Even with my love of the gleam of their sparkling goodies and the fact I feel right at home talking it up with one of the great Geek Squad members, I have to ask, “What the hell Best Buy?”

On at least three separate occasions now I have looked online for a product, checking customer reviews, comparing  options, looking at prices and making my choice before walking into the store to buy the item. Only to find on these three occasion the store had at least a ten percent mark up over the online price. At first I just though oh the Alaskan mark up I was so used to, but after thinking a bit long I realized things don’t add up. As a silver member of Best Buy  I get free shipping from online purchases and if you order online to pick up at the store you can get free shipping as well so they aren’t marking things up for the shipping.

I asked someone at the store and they seemed trained on this issue because they had an answer right away, not need to bring a manager into this issue. I was told, just show the check out person the print out from the web site and they’ll change the price for you. Three times I’ve done this now all on items over a hundred dollars, but I wonder how much extra Alaskans and Hawaiians are charge like this on a daily basis? It has now become standard practice for me to go to Best Buy’s web site and bookmark the item page on my iPhone before I got to the store to buy anything over fifty dollars.

Look I’m not journalist and I’m not doing an in-depth probe into the underground world of the back room Best Buy cheating customers with unfair mark up practices. All I’m doing and letting you know to check this out yourselves. Save some money and do a quick search before your next trip to your big box store of choice and let me know if you find a store seeming to have strange pricing so I can save a few buck.

And to Best Buy, I don’t know why you have this practice, but maybe you should look at your policies before you become the next Boarders and are replaced with an online source for my and many others buying dollars.

So lets get to the stats, novel one still in the holding phase. Giving it time to settle in my brain before trying to do the first read through and mark up my edits. As for book two I am still plowing along with that one. Last week I had 1,100 and  tonight I wrote 1,586 words on that novel, bringing my total to 7,874. Which means I’m keeping my 1,000 words a day pace fairly well.

As much as I enjoy getting this story down that I’m working on, I am really want to get the first book edited so I can turn it over to my first reader.

I’ve heard mixed things about who a first reader should be. For me it was without a doubt going to be my wife. I’ve heard this isn’t the best person for the job, because a spouse or other family members can not be honest with the writer and give a fair opinion on the work. Well anyone who says that has not met my wife.

Although she drives me crazy sometimes, as I am sure she’d say the same about me, she is often brutally honest and often gets labeled a bitch for her efforts. Even with me it is not an uncommon assurance that I get the “your are acting like a d**k or I’m not sure what you are trying to write here, but what ever it is, you aren’t saying it right.”

Although she can be warmer to me than most others, we also have thirteen years history behind us and often we release on each other all the baggage and b.s. that comes with daily life in the pre-teens of the 21st century.

I also feel, like I expect many artist do; whether they be a painter, musician, writer or whatever they do to express themselves, that without an audience then the art they create isn’t able to truly be complete. I mean if I create a story or a painting but never share  it with someone else then it is almost as if that piece of art never existed. Of course anyone who has read my work might argue that to use the term art to describe it, brings down people who are true artist. To that I say screw you. have you seen a Picasso? I agree it is art but I for one don’t get it. I’d take a Frank Miller, Frank Fazetta, Tim Sale, or Salvador Dali over Picasso any day. Okay, so if an original was given to me I would take it but it would be up for auction fairly quickly. Unless it was from his blue period, I do like some of that, but I digress.

As I was saying before my mind started to wander like it often does, I want to get my work out there so people can check it out. I know in this modern age I am sure to get blasted by insults that I suck. To those folks I say, fine don’t read anything else I write and it is okay because Mur Lafferty says it is okay to suck. (FYI if you don’t know who Mur Lafferty is, shame on you go to http://murverse.com and check her out. She is a wonderful story teller and pod caster and one of the top three or four pod caster writers that let me feel like it is okay for me to express myself in written words).

So until we meet again,

Nanu Nanu

In December a friend came to visit and we got talking about writing and we both wished we would write more. We came up with a plan to become our own little writer’s workshop. We agreed to write at least one thousand words a day, and in January we started our writing.

After a few weeks of this we realized we wouldn’t be able to do it every day so we allowed one night a week to take a break and do other things. I’ve tired to stay fairly faithful to this.

In March of 2010 I started writing a monster horror novel in the vain of one of those SyFy channel movies of the week. After writing the first 10,000 words last year it was put away with the hope of getting back to it at some point.

Cut to this January and I needed something to write, so I picked up the 10,000 words I already had and started adding to the story.

My initial hope was to write 75,000 words. From everything I’ve read 75,000 words is a good length for a first novel.

As of March 23, 2011 I finished the first draft of that novel. It ended up with just under 65,000 words, so it was a little shy of my goal, but I feel pretty confident there are parts of the story that will need to be reworked on the second draft. During the rewrite I expect to expand up to that 75,000 words.

So after finishing a novel would you expect to take a break and relax for a while? I thought about it but the next evening I wrote the opening 1,100 words for my next novel. Also, I do a weekly work up for a role playing game my friends and I are playing. Five sessions in and I’ve written over 4,ooo words on that. The idea of rest doesn’t seem to have caught on.

That gets us to today and why I came back here to do some more writing. I wanted to have a place to keep track of writing goals I have and the victories along the way. I have started a daily word count shout out on Twitter which also posts on my Facebook account.  I thought someplace to talk a bit more on what I’m writing, when I’m focused on a story or on editing that sort of thing would be helpful, so I am using my blog as that place.

So that get’s you caught up on what’s going on. I’m hoping to get on here and bust out a little follow up maybe weekly and hope to get back into my movie reviews. Also for those of us who keep up with me here, you will be some of the first to know when my novels will be available.

Short term plan for publishing will be to self publish through Amazon, Nook and iBook stores and if I get requests for physical copies I’ll think about maybe doing something like Lulu.com. If that is something you would be interested in let me know.

For now thanks for sticking around and hope to keep you fed with new content.

The A-Team was one of my favorite shows as a kid. As a family, we would park in front of the T.V. every week to watch Mr. T bust some heads. Dwight Schultz was unforgettable as “Howling Mad” Murdock and George Peppard as “Hannibal” Smith brought class along with his legendary career to the show. But what brought me to the show was “Faceman” Peck himself, Dirk Benedict. I loved Battlestar Galactica as a kid. The original BSG, the one were Ben Cartwright was the Admiral, Rick Springfield was Apollo’s brother, while  Jane Seymour was his wife and the coolest Viper pilot ever was Lt. Starbuck and Starbuck was a man played by Dirk Benedict. So going into the updated release of the A-Team I wasn’t expecting much.

The story revolves around four military special forces officers, that specialize in impossible missions, sent on a secret mission to recover stolen U.S. plates for printing hundred dollar bills. The mission goes awry as their commanding officer, and the only man who knew they where on a sanctioned mission, was killed and the plates where stolen by rival operatives.

After being court martialed and spending six months in separate prisons, they escape to track down the other operatives, return the plates, and clear their names. All while being chased by FBI agent Charisa Sosa (Jessica Biel) and rogue CIA agent Lynch (Patrick Wilson).

The cast chosen to fill these roles needed to be special and I feel in most cases they found great replacements. Liam Neeson not only continued the tradition of placing a veteran actor into the role of Hannibal but really made the role his own. His look and normal persona was very different from anything I’ve seen of his previous work.

Bradley Cooper is no Dirk Benedict, but his charm makes him instantly likable as the modern Faceman and his six pack gets the women interested or at least it works for my wife.

Relative newcomer Sharlto Copley brought the madness as Murdock. Only seeing Copley in the film District 9 I wasn’t sure what to expect from him, but other than Jessica Biel, he was my favorite part of the movie. Without his performance the movie would have been just another over the top, completely unbelievable action flick, but with him the movie is the second best action/comedy of the year, Kick-Ass being my favorite, and in the top five of the past five years.

One of the questions I get the most after people find out I went to see the A-Team is “what about the guy playing Mr. T?” The only way to answer that is to say Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson isn’t playing Mr.T, he is playing B.A. Baracus. To most people the 80′s A-Team was Mr. T and although I don’t think Jackson is as much of a standout personality as Mr. T was, but his performance of B.A. he was good. This B.A. was a little more laid back than the T.V. show but it worked better for the ensemble cast.

I mentioned earlier that Jessica Biel was my favorite part of the film. Let me be completely honest, her part could have been played by anyone. There was very little of interest in her character. The only reason she was my favorite part of the film is because she is Jessica Biel. I’m willing to watch her in just about anything.

Over all the film was a over the top action feast. A load of bullets flying and things blowing up, mixed in with some unbelievable stunts that barely work thanks to the help of computer effects, but in the end it is fun. You laugh more than the last two comedies I went to see and I found myself cheering, inside, for the good guys. For me the A-Team is defiantly worth seeing and I’m looking forward to adding it to my Blu-ray library.

In the late 90′s my first experience with the internet was WebTV. Over all it wasn’t the best web tool, but in the days of 56k modems it made browsing pretty easy. One of the things I found that made an impact on me was Seeing Ear Theater (SET) on the SciFi channels web site. SET streamed some the best science fiction audio dramas I’d ever heard. I enjoyed them so much I ran the volume of my WebTV through my cassette stereo and recorded the shows off to tape so I could listen to them on the go.

A few years later, around 2003-2004 my wife gave me my first iPod. At first I filled it up music and carried it ever where, but even with 30 gigabytes of my music it wasn’t as rewarding to me as exploring fantastic worlds in my mind. I began to search the web looking for audio to inspire my dreams and my search lead me back to SET. With my iPod the cassettes I had made before where useless so I found a program that allowed me to record audio that was streaming through my sound card. Again I captured as much of the audio as I could and finally I had a small library of audio dramas to enjoy on the go.

The first year or so of owning an iPod there wasn’t a lot of spoken word entertainment to be found. Audible.com was around but their science fiction and horror, my genre of choice, was pretty thin and the monthly cost wasn’t something that interested me at the time. Early 2005 I began to hear about podcasts. At that point to listen to them you needed special pod-catching software, go to a web site that hosted them or find them on torrent sites.

The first podcast I can remember listening to was This Week In Tech (TWiT). I had enjoyed a television show called Screen Savers for the past few years but as the network that aired the show progressed and changed, going from ZDTV to TechTV and finally ending at G4, the Screen Savers had lost its appeal and finally was canceled. The former host of the Screen Savers created TWiT and the show had the “feel” of the previous show I enjoyed so it was an easy choice to include it on my weekly listening providing I was able to find it and download it using my torrent software.

In June of 2005 Apple introduced iTunes 4.9 which incorporated podcast. Now it was easier than ever to download podcast and get them on my iPod. TwiT was the first podcast I subscribed to and my search began to find interesting things to listen to.

Most of the early podcasts I listened to where fan shows, things like Harry Potter fan shows Mugglecast and Pottercast and Firefly’s the Signal. Then I found my first podcast novel, Earthcore by Scott Sigler, and I was hooked. Well I shouldn’t say “my” first postcast novel because as Sigler would point out, Earthcore was the world’s first podcast only novel.

There were 5 or 6 episodes of Earthcore already available to download by the time I found it and after listening to them was hooked as a good junkie should be. Why a junkie you might ask, well  “Junkies” is the loving name given to fans or listener of Sigler’s books. Once you listen to the first episode you are hooked and can not wait for the next.

Over the next few years Sigler continued putting out great books for free as podcasts and I continued devouring them like crazy. Geeky as I am, I even signed up on his site to let my junkie flag fly. Of course I’m Tavaron over there if you go look.

In 2008 Sigler published Infected with a major printing label Crown Publishing and followed it up with Contagious later the same year.

Earlier this week Sigler’s latest book under the Crown Label, Ancestor, was released. I pre-ordered my copy a few months back and I’m eagerly awaiting it, but for those of you who enjoy good action/science /horror stories you should check it out.

To find out more about Scott Sigler, his books and his still free podcasts novels check out his website www.scottsigler.com

Growing up in the 80′s and looking into the next millennium I expected flying cars, robot maids and all those kind of futuristic things. What I did not expect is the growing list of television shows, cartoons and films from the 80′s being updated for the modern audience. In one week two very well known 80′s franchises where relaunched with new actors and new stories but similar feeling as their 80′s counterpart.

One of these 80′s remakes is the Karate Kid starting Jaden Smith as the lead kid. The new film follows the original story with it’s own take on the tale. Young Dre Parker (Smith) and his mother (Taraji P. Henson) travel to China for a new job and a new life. Once there Dre realizes he doesn’t fit in when some of the local bullies decide to make his life tough. The leader of the bullies, Cheng (Zhenwei Wang) and his gang are trained in Kung Fu and torment Dre every time they run into him. After Dre plays a prank on the group they chase him down and begin to beat him. Mr. Han (Jackie Chan), the handy man at Dre’s apartment steps in to protect Dre. After defeating the group of boys, Dre asks Mr. Han to teach him Kung Fu to help protect himself from the other kids. Mr. Han takes Dre to speak with Cheng’s teacher Master Li (Rongguang Yu) to try and rectify the problem. Master Li has trained his students to never show mercy and informs Mr. Han that he is not going to be able to leave if either he or Dre does not fight. Mr. Han tells Master Li that Dre with fight Cheng but needs time to train so they are to meet in the upcoming Kung Fu tournament. Master Li agrees and Mr. Han begins to train Dre in an unorthodox method. Dre learns more than Kung Fu as his friendship with Mr. Han grows, so does his respect for his mother.

The 2010 version of Karate Kid differs from the original yet maintains the heart of the original. Jackie Chan is the perfect replacement for the instructor originally played by the late Pat Morita.

The younger cast in this version felt strange to me. The violence between such young kids in the film felt wrong to me compared to the much older actors in the original. Although it is easy to see Jaden Smith has had martial arts training compared to Ralph Macchio in the original. Bottom line if you saw the original the new one offers little new to the story, but the action is bumped up to the next notch. If you haven’t seen the original then it is a fun family film, providing your family is okay with the fighting. Keep in mind the over all moral to the story is Kung Fu is for defense and not to fight. Jaden is still pretty young and seems a little challenged with his performance at times but Jackie Chan was incredible. I’m not sure I’ve seen a better performance from him.

It is worth sitting through the first part of the end credits to see some behind the scenes photos. Shots of Jaden with dad Will Smith are touching and a shot of Jaden with his hair upbraided caused quite the chuckle in the theater.

I enjoyed the film but can’t say I’m in a hurry for the Blu-ray release. It is worth a viewing so check it out, but go to a cheap show save you cash for the other big 80′s remake.

Probably one of the scariest concepts in the modern age is the idea of how far will man push the boundaries of science before science pushes back. The reason it is scary is it is real. We found out how scary real science can get in 1945 with the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Since then we’ve moved into the world of colliding atoms and DNA splicing. The idea of creating a black hole that causes the planet to implode and get sucked into the black hole afterward or creating a creature with DNA manipulation that you are not quite sure if it is harmless or not are the nightmares science can be created today. That fear of science has made its way to the movie theater in the recent release of Splice.

Spice revolves around two scientists,  Clive Nicoli (Adrien Brody) and Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley). They are in charge of developing new species to harvest tissue from for the benefit of medical research. To do so, they use genes from different animals to created new life forms. After successfully creating a new male and female life form, the two scientist secretly continue their research by adding human DNA. After a quicker than expected gestation period a new life form was born. Clive wanted to destroy it before the experiment went to far, but Elsa decided to keep it and study the new creature they named Dren.

Dren (Delphine Chanéac) grew quickly and developed into an intelligent female with a tail with a stinger at its tip.

When the company funding the research begins to pressure the science team for results Clive and Elsa move Dren from the laboratory  they had her hidden in to a storage room then finally moving her to a farm Elsa owned.

Keeping Dren a secret and raising the new creature begins to take its toll on the two scientists relationship, especially once Dren begins to get feelings for her creator father Clive.

The film has a few good scares but really felt less like the horror film I was expecting and more like dark drama or thriller. There where plenty of times where the film made me feel uncomfortable but few where I actually felt scared.

Over all the acting was good. the performances Abigail Chu as young Dren and Delphine Chanéac as the older Dren was done very well. For a creature that doesn’t speak both actors where able to make you feel compassion for the creature and fear at the same time.

Overall I think I liked the movie, although for some reason I felt almost dirty walking out of the theater. It was like I shouldn’t have watched what I just saw and I can’t explain why I had that feeling. I did not find the movie overly scary nor do I feel a want to watch it again anytime soon. That being said I felt it was well made, and interesting premise with excellent acting. I just can’t put my finger on why I’m not excited to put this movie on my Blu-Ray wish list.

If you like this type of movie, you should see it. Maybe go see it at a local cheap theater or during a manatee to save some cash, with ticket prices these days save where you can, but I think it is worth a viewing. At very least rent the Blu-ray or DVD when it makes it way home but don’t watch it with children.

I’ve been a long time fan of Ridley Scott‘s films. Since I was a kid and first saw films like Alien, Blade Runner and Legend I was hooked. Some people might say he stumbled for a few years with pictures like Thelma & Louise and G.I. Jane, I for one enjoyed both, but most would agree he hit home runs with Gladiator and Black Hawk Down. There have been mixed reviews of some of his newer films like Matchstick Men, Kingdom of Heaven and American Gangster, again I liked them although preferred the directors cut of Kingdom of Heaven more than the theater cut. His latest film is a retelling of the legendary archer and bandit Robin Hood.

To tell you the story of Robin Hood would be a little difficult because every time a version is made details of the story change. Over all it is the tale of a man who becomes a bandit and with his followers, often referred to as his merry men, take up arms against the corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham and protect the people by stealing from the corrupt rich and giving to the poor.

But this film isn’t that story. This is the tale of military archer Robin Longstride (Russell Crowe) who has fought with King Richard the Lionheart (Danny Huston) during the crusades and is returning from the war. As the army marches north it stops along the way to pillage cities in France as to not return to England broke and empty handed. While attacking the last city before meeting with the barge to take them home the King is killed and the army retreats.

The one of the Kings nobles, Robert Loxley, takes the crown to return it to the Kings son, soon to be new King, Prince John. Loxley and his group of Knights were attack and killed by Godfrey (Mark Strong), a friend to Prince John (Oscar Isaac) who was working for the King of France. Robin and his group seeing a group of English being attacked fought back forcing the French to run. Loxley with his dying breath asks Robin to return his sword to his father Walter Loxley (Max von Sydow) which he agrees to do.

Robin realizes he and his men won’t be allowed on the barge home as commoners so he takes the identity of Robert Loxley while his men take the gear of the Knights. The pretend nobles take the crown and use the barge to return to England. After handing over the crown to pampered Prince John, Robin and his men head to Nottingham where they are meant to split and go their own ways.

When Robin goes to the home of Sir Walter Loxley  to return the sword and ask about an inscription found on the hilt, he runs into the now widowed Marion Loxley (Cate Blanchett). After reporting the news of Robert Loxley’s death to Marion, she takes him to Walter Loxley to return the sword. To his surprise Robin is asked by Walter to continue playing the part of his son Robert because Walter is old, blind, and weak and with Marion being a woman the family lands would be claimed by the crown. Robin agrees to the deception.

Meanwhile, King John sends out Godfrey to collect taxes and Godfrey uses his power to anger the people in an attempt to force an uprising causing the Kings forces to be split between the uprising citizens and the incoming forces from France.

Robin gathers his men to help fight against the invading army.

Originally I was pretty disappointed with the movie. I didn’t feel it was a Robin Hood film, but more like a sequel to Kingdom of Heaven. Then I got into an argument with a buddy of mine over Guy Richie’s Sherlock Holmes flick. He was saying Holmes needed the traditional hat and pipe and shouldn’t be an action hero. My thought was we’ve seen that version and there are plenty of classic examples that do it fine. My guess was Mr. Richie wanted to do something different, and I thought making the fight and action scenes  unfold using intellect was an interesting approach. Once I had debated that a new twist to an old subject was refreshing, I couldn’t go the other way with Robin Hood.

If you are a purest Robin Hood fan who looks forward to Robin doing trick shots at the Sheriffs competition, then this isn’t the Robin Hood you’re looking for. If you want something in the vain of Kingdom of Heaven meets Gladiator then this will be your favorite movie ever.

Russell Crowe played Robin like he plays every character, quite and bruiting. There where times I forgot I was watching a Robin Hood film and thought it was Maximus from Gladiator. Mark Strong as Godfrey was a convincing enough antagonist, but he has had a lot of practice this last year playing the bad guy that the performance didn’t stand out. Even Cate Blanchett who is normally a screen darling didn’t seem to shine as brightly as normal. The people who really seemed to stand out to me where two fairly small parts. One of which, Friar Tuck (Mark Addy) and the other Sir Walter Loxley (Max von Sydow). Addy was a perfect fit for Tuck and brought some humor to a fairly dry movie.  Sydow playing the strange pretend father to Crowe’s Robin was probably the best character in the film even though he has less that ten minutes screen time. Between his instant likable personality and the glee his character seems to exude, Sydow is a blessing to the film.

The actor that made the biggest impression on me was Oscar Isaac as Prince John. I hadn’t seen Isaac before his performance in Robin Hood, but he felt very convening as spoiled John and as the story developed I really thought he was learning and growing only to have the carpet pull from under me when he reverts to his head strong ways.

Overall the look and feel of the film was that of a well made movie. I understand we are getting a different telling of the Robin Hood mythology and I’m fine with that. I even feel this telling makes sense in a pseudo-historic way. I think in the end it just wasn’t the adventure I was hoping for. I think I’ll watch it again once it comes to Blu Ray, I’m sure there will be the three hour directors cut, and try it out in a different mind set but for now if you want a recommendation for Robin Hood check out Mel Brooks: Men in Tights or my favorite version was done in England during the 1980′s call Robin of Sherwood and stars a young Ray Winstone as Wil Scarlet.

In Hollywood, sequels are almost required if the first one has any success and sometimes even if the first one tanked. It seems as though reboots/remakes and sequels are a third of the “new” movies released this summer. Add to the mix that movies based on comic books, which seem to take up a third of summer releases, and right in that mix lands Iron Man 2.

Iron Man 2 revolves around billionaire playboy Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) who dons a armored robotic suit to help stabilize peace. He isn’t a crime fighter in the vain of Batman, helping to clean up the streets of his city, but prefers big picture stuff like stopping wars. The problem lies in that the public knows who is behind the helmet; Stark isn’t the most stable person; and the government doesn’t like the powerful weapon in the hands of a loose cannon. Throw in a pissed off Russian, Ivan Ranko (Mickey Rourke), who wants revenge on Stark for his families past wrongs and you’ve got two hours of computer generated action. Russians, Senate and self image aren’t Stark’s only concerns.  The source of power for his suit and the magnet that keeps shrapnel from getting to his heart is spreading  poison into his blood system and killing him. Knowing he is dying, Stark becomes self destructive and to keep his company in stable hands he turns it over to his secretary Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). Needing a replacement secretary he hires Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson) who turns out to be more than he expects.

With all that is going on in Stark’s life behind the scene’s a business rival Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) has helped fake the death of Ranko and is using Ranko’s knowledge of the arc reactor to build new powers suits to upstage Stark at his own Stark Expo and Stark’s friend James “Rhodey” Rhodes (Don Cheadle) grows tired of pressures from the government to get the Iron Man technology and Stark’s immature antics takes one of the suits and turns it over to the Airforce.

Iron Man was my favorite movie of 2008, even ahead of the Dark Knight. Where as the Dark Knight might have been darker, with over all better performances but, if I had to pop a Blu-ray in for a few hours of entertainment the lighter Iron Man would be my choice to kick back to. Iron Man 2 is enjoyable but for 2010 isn’t as enjoyable as an earlier comic book release this year in Kick-Ass.

Downey is his typical mix of rugged leading man with the awkward charm invoked from Charlie Chaplin. Although Cheadle’s role as Rhodey was more intense than Terrence Howard who he replaced in the sequel, it seemed to work better against the childish Downey. My biggest complaint with Cheadle  is there just wasn’t enough of him. Paltrow who always seems way too classy for these movies is intelligent and graceful as Potts. Rourke is terrific as Ranko although playing crazy doesn’t seem much of stretch for him, nor does playing smarmy seem to be out of place for Rockwell as Justin Hammer. If I had any negative criticism about the film it would be a lull in the middle and Scarlett Johansson. There is no doubt in my mind this was the best Johansson has ever looked on film, being a fan of redheads myself, but her performance was stiff. She really has the prefect look for a comic book heroine, but I felt she was fairly robotic in the part, seeming to walk through the role without emotion. Maybe that was just her character, or maybe the script didn’t give her much to work with, but it felt to me that she was shoe-horned into the movie either to add a hot girl to the mix, as a set up for the future Avengers movie or maybe her character head lining her own flick. If she is ever picked to play a sexy Vulcan all she’d need is the hair cut.

If you enjoyed the first movie, you’ll want to see Iron Man 2. As far as sequels go it wasn’t a bad follow up, but doesn’t hold up as well as the first. Like the first film you’ll want to sit through the credits for a small scene which leads into another upcoming Marvel movie. It will probably be one of my top five movies of the year.  As of right now it sits at number two and will defiantly be on my Blu-Ray wish list.

One thing I almost forgot to mention, unlike every other big budget movies Iron Man 2 is not in 3-D and as far as I’m concerned that is a bonus. Although I have recently read that Marvel is jumping on the band wagon soon enough and most of their future releases will be.