Ever After, book 11 in Kim Harrison's fantastic urban fantasy series The Hollows, continues the story of a witch--really a demon--Rachel Morgan and her friends, which include elves, pixies, vampires, werewolves, and some really pissed off demons. This being the 11th book in the series I'll have to give some brief back story to the world of The Hollows.
It’s the end of the year, and you know what that means: lists! Here is a list of my personal top ten for the best TV shows of the year. And man it was so hard to choose just ten; this was such a great, no fantastic, year for TV, probably the best in the last couple of years. So let’s get started from 10 to 1.
I am not the biggest fan of CBS shows for a variety of reasons: they often follow a strict formula that gets tiring really fast. Then they got a hold of Person of Interest, an amazing Sci-fi procedural that is incredibly good, so I had to give them some credit. That is the real reason I was even remotely interested in the Sherlock Holmes project when I first heard about it.
Dax Shepard (Parenthood) and Kristin Bell star in this sort of indie flick that got a pretty wide release and has some of the best star cameos I have seen in years. A former getaway driver for a gang that used to rob banks leaves the Witness Protection program to help his girlfriend get a new job in LA, while avoiding the former gang he helped put away.
The Expendables return to fulfill your action star nostalgia quota for the month. After a successful first film, Sylvester Stallone returns with a star-studded cast that includes: Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Chuck Norris, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Liam Hemsworth, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. That is a lot of star and a lot of testosterone. OK I am not going to bore you with the plot because really does the plot matter when you have some of the most prolific action stars since the since the eighties. It delivers with the action, over the top kill sequences and the stars look pretty good doing it.
We return to Bon Temps to follow the continuing journey of Sookie Stackhouse our favorite telepathic waitress, well one my favorites anyways, as she deals with all sorts of supernatural problems surrounding her life. This book finds Sookie in danger, as her boyfriend Eric Northman the vampire Viking blows into town with payback on his mind, a shifter is out to get her, and there is more fairy trouble because of something she inherited in the last book.
James Stark returns in Devil Said Bang, picking up roughly three months after the events of Aloha From Hell. Stark has had his hands full trying to stay alive and trying to make his way back to LA after being stuck as the reigning Lucifer of Hell. But LA isn’t as Stark left it, his angelic half is running loose, something is eating all the ghosts, and some of the most powerful magic wielding people are planning something big.
The Bourne Legacy is the fourth entry into the Bourne film series starring Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz and aiming to continue the series without the titular Jason Bourne played by Matt Damon in the last three movies. I didn’t envy the makers of this film because they had to come up with a story that was compelling enough to tell without Matt Damon in the lead role, after a successful trilogy. That said, you didn’t have to watch the first three movies in the series because the first half of this movie, basically gives you the gist of what happened.
Total Recall, starring Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel, hit theaters last weekend adapting itself more from Philip K. Dick's short story than the original movie made in 1990 starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Like the original, Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell) is disenchanted with his life living as an assemblyman for a synthetic robot police force in another country across the globe. His wife Laurie (Kate Beckinsale) urges him to keep calm that everything is as it seems.
It is the year of the comic book movie, and The Dark Knight Rises marks the last most anticipated comic book movie of the year following Marvel's the Avengers, and Sony's The Amazing Spider-Man. The Dark Knight Rises is also the anticipated finale of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy which sought to give Bruce Wayne and Batman a proper sendoff. This review will be a bit short because revealing anything more might constitute some spoilers.
