It’s tough to follow up a book like Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide with, well, anything. So it’s inevitable that this book comes up a bit short compared to that lush book, stuffed full of amazing art in multiple media and wildly imaginative text.
That said, the Care and Feeding of Sprites has a more modest goal — to be a fantasy version of a real world pet care guide — and succeeds at it wonderfully. Writer Holly Black shouldered a lot of the burden with the Spiderwick Chronicles previously, but in Sprites, the book really has to succeed or fail based on Tony DiTerlizzi’s art. (Black’s contributions are strong, but maintaining the mock-serious tone really makes her work a quiet pleasure.)
DiTerlizzi’s sprites run the gamut of shapes and sizes, and all feel as though they could spring from a fantasy world ecology. Plants, insects and even frogs all serve as sources of inspiration and the end results all feel very right.
Part of the book’s high price tag is the heavy glow-in-the-dark poster, which also serves as the book’s cover. Honestly, I would have rather this been a separate product — I’m not sure how well the posters will hold up to serving as a cover on the way to a child’s wall — but it’s gorgeous.
I would recommend this to someone who already owns the Spiderwick Chronicles or Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide, which are better books. But this is a fun companion piece for those looking for more insights into the fantastical world around them.
After hearing about it on the radio, I’ve been listening to Tommy Guerrero’s new album, “From the Soil to the Soul.” I can’t find any reviews of the album online, and it’s sort of hard to describe, but I’ve really been enjoying this mellow, mellow album.
Given the low cost and high power of computer generated special effects, superhero movies are all the rage in Hollywood, from the revival of the Batman and Superman franchises, the continuing success of the Spider-Man franchise, the spectacle of Tim Allen as a superhero, and so on. So it’s not a surprise that someone would take CGI firepower and use it in a comedy, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, and with Uma Thurman as the titular superhero ex-girlfriend, they have someone who could credibly pull it off.
But what certainly seems like a clever Saturday Night Live bit never really does more than could be done in about four minutes on a Saturday night. The movie is padded with meeting the characters, seeing the relationship blossom, giving a reason for them to break up, THEN finally getting the break-up before having a somewhat forced resolution, ending the best part of the movie for the sake of it being a conventional film.
The best stuff that you’ve certainly seen in the commercials — G-Girl twisting a butcher knife with her bare hands during the break-up, flying off and busting through her now ex-boyfriend’s roof, flinging a live killer shark through a window — that’s all from the sequence in the middle, when she’s in deranged ex-girlfriend mode. The other stuff that’s added on, including a tiresome Lex Luthor-like nemesis, is what drags this film down. (And with all the padding, we never get the only interesting backstory: What G-Girl means, other than a blink-and-you-miss-it suggestion in a deleted scene that it might be a g-spot joke, which doesn’t make sense for the characters at all.)
It’s not the fault of the supporting cast that they’re underfoot. Rainn Wilson is good, as is Anna Faris, although Wanda Sykes is criminally wasted in this film. Eddie Izzard doesn’t really get the chance to shine that he deserves: His archvillainous Professor Bedlam is, frankly, kind of a wuss and clearly no match for G-Girl in any sense.
This isn’t a bad way to spend an evening for a superhero fan: The good stuff is pretty good, the special effects are neat (G-Girl’s flight and high-speed motion has a nice visual), there’s a number of DC Comics references (G-Girl spinning like a top to suck the oxygen away from a fire, super-breath and fire-vision, a creepy tryst a half-mile above Manhattan set to dopey Superman I romantic music that terrifies Luke Wilson’s non-flying character) and the performers do a good job with very ordinary material.
But it’s a rental for all but the most obsessive Uma Thurman or Luke Wilson fans.
From Wired: It’s Alive!
WHEN I FIRST MEET PLEO, the tiny dinosaur is curled up on a kitchen table, its long tail and big head pulled inward. It’s snoring quietly, emitting a strangely soothing sound, almost like the amplified purring of a guinea pig. I’m tempted to reach out and touch it – but it looks so peaceful, I can’t bring myself to disturb it. | Then I realize what I’m doing: I’m worrying about waking up a robot. | Caleb Chung seems to understand my reluctance. “It’s OK,” the toy’s inventor says, motioning to the little green lizard. “You can touch him.” But before I do, Pleo wakes up on its own, fluttering open its doelike eyes and lifting its head. There’s a barely perceptible whizzing as its 14 internal motors spring into action and it struggles upright, stretching itself to get the kinks out. “You know, all your dogs do that,” Chung says as Pleo begins to poke around the table. “They wake up in the morning and go ‘ummmm’ – just like that.” The dino lets out a long, creaky honk.
“I think he wants to play,” Chung suggests, so I tentatively stroke the nubbly rubber skin on its back. It moos happily. A laptop on the kitchen table is monitoring Pleo’s internal state. As I trigger the touch sensors embedded in the toy, its “arousal” numbers start rising: 16, 23, 27, 28. It’s like a Matrix view of Pleo’s subconscious. I poke its left leg, and it cranes its neck curiously to see what just happened. I’m impressed. This feels less like interacting with a piece of machinery and more like playing with a kitten.
Chung knows how to create emotional connections to toys. Ten years ago, the bushy-haired, hyperkinetic inventor conceived Furby, selling more than 40 million of the yammering gremlins in a worldwide craze that launched the now-booming industry of robotic pets. A string of artificial companions have since trundled off the production line: the FurReal cat, the Roboraptor, the Robosapien, the Aibo and its litter of me-too electronic pooches. Household robots have arrived – not as servants doing our laundry but as helpless, babylike things that demand we take care of them.
Still, all of them have acted like, well, robots. But Chung, now 50, has a different idea: He wants to create “an artificial life-form” – something that looks eerily alive and is affected by its environment. Pleo begins as a baby, and its personality is forged by how you treat it. If it uses a high-pitched squeak and you feed it, it will learn to repeat that noise to get fed. Be nice to it and it will become mellow and friendly; mistreat it and you will evolve a bitter, annoyed robot. Theoretically, no two Pleos – Pleii? – will end up with the same personality.
Retail is expected to be about $250 for your kid’s pet baby dinosaur. Start putting aside cash now.
The genius of Terry Pratchett in “Thud!” is not his deft blending of serious themes with comedy, nor his light touch while social issues with mystery novels, nor even his wildly inventive worldbuilding. Pratchett is able to do what few contemporary writers are able to do, in that he continues to crank out novels that absolutely function as the latest installment in a serialized long-form novel — elements of “Going Postal,” “The Truth,” all the guards novels, the wizard novels and more all appear in “Thud!” — yet stands alone perfectly well.
One doesn’t need to have followed Sam Vimes’ journey from street cop to duke to understand his relationship with the city’s ruler, his wife, his fellow cops or the community. If you have read it, it adds an extra richness to the proceedings, but if you haven’t, Pratchett touches on everything just enough so that even new readers won’t be lost. Every Discworld novel is someone’s first, and if they jump on board with “Thud!” not only will they not be disappointed or lost, they’ll have read a strong comedy that speaks to a number of the major issues of the setting — as well as to the real-world issues of ethnic strife and the ability for ancient history to cause blood to continue to be spilled over the centuries — they’ll likely want to pick up all the other novels as well.
For committed Discworld fans, “Thud!” is a romp which finally pulls the dwarf/troll ethnic hatred to the forefront, discusses its roots, its mythical and religious dimensions, how it manifests itself in the realpolitik of Discworld and how it manifests in the teaming streets of Ankh-Morpork. Pratchett isn’t so tied down with his metaphor as to make it possible to draw lines from the conflict to the Middle East or Northern Ireland or Bosnia or any other real world group. Instead, he works on the major elements of all ethnic strife, including demagoguery and the ability of people to suddenly turn on neighbors who were just fine a week before. He also addresses the fairly thorny issue of people not feeling true to their groups unless they manifest these sorts of deep-seated hatreds in a serious way.
The story also includes a potential major change for the setting in the closing pages, potentially even bigger than the arrival of the clacks many books back. Even if one isn’t a fan of the dwarf/troll relationship or the guards’ storyline, it’d likely be worth reading the novel just to understand the future changes to the setting, which could potentially be dramatic.
“Thud!” is one of Pratchett’s best Discworld novels to date and is enthusiastically recommended for fans of the setting, as well as fantasy novel fans in general.
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