Please visit me there

Notable Stars: Logan Lerman, Brandon Jackson, Alexandra Daddario, Pierce Brosnan, Uma Thurman, Sean Bean, Rosario Dawson, Kevin McKidd

Running Time: 119 minutes

In the post-Harry Potter world, there are of course going to be comparisons between that story and every teen sci-fi/fantasy movie that’s released. And for Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief, the comparisons poured in before the movie was released and kept pouring in.

… the obvious similarity of Percy Jackson to the Harry Potter movies inevitably makes it feel somewhat secondhand. – NY Times

Dutifully Potteresque it begins, and dutifully Potteresque it ends. – Globe and Mail

Has all the CGI sorcery of a Harry Potter pic, but none of the magic. – Entertainment Weekly

Percy Jackson, you are no Harry Potter. – Detroit News

The only problem: Percy Jackson is not like Harry Potter. Aside from having a boy and a girl help out the story’s teenage hero, the movies diverge, and quite quickly.

By the way, I’m a HUGE fan of the Potter series and I have read and really enjoy Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson books.

Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief is one of the funnier fantasy movies I’ve seen in a while. What it lacks in “magic,” it makes up for with humor, wit, and some well-placed lessons in Greek mythology.

The Lightning Thief is the tale of young Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman), a dyslexic, ADHD-affected New York teenager who finds out he’s a demigod — the son of the Greek god of the sea, Poseidon. Once discovered, Percy gets whisked away to a training camp for demigods where he discovers that his ADHD is something that will help him in battle and his dyslexia will help him make sense out of Greek, literally.

Percy is joined by the beautiful Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario), a daughter of Athena, and best friend Grover (Brandon Jackson), a satyr assigned as a protector to Poseidon’s offspring.

The trio go on a quest — like Perseus and Hercules, not Harry — to free Percy’s mother from the grips of Hades and to hopefully find out what the heck happened to Zeus’s stolen lightning bolt. Zeus (Sean Bean) suspects his brother Poseidon (Kevin McKidd) and son Percy because of a long rivalry between the two top gods. As a result, global war between the gods seems to be a sure thing.

Those gods and their petty fights.

Now, let me make something very clear: The Lightning Thief is a FUN movie, just like the novels are FUN books. The first in the series is fast-paced, full of humor, likable characters and exciting events, and contains modern re-imaginings of millenia-old myths. (So yes, I guess you can say Percy Jackson ripped off old stories–2,500-year-old ones.)

The movie is the same.

There will be complaints from the Percy Jackson literalists, who will be pissed that the characters in the movie are at least five years older than in the book, that Ares, the god of war, isn’t in the movie, and that there is just a very brief mention of Kronos, the Titan father of the gods.

But all of these sacrifices make for a better, free-flowing movie.

In The Lightning Thief, director Chris Columbus, who also directed the first two Potter films, matched the spirit of the Riordan’s book. His changes helped make The Lightning Thief a superior film than either of his literal takes on The Sorcerer’s Stone or The Chamber of Secrets, just without the superior source material.

While Columbus spends some time explaining Percy Jackson’s world, he uses most of the movie showing the mythological world. (What makes Riordan’s books so enjoyable is that they take place in the real world, not off magically hidden in the forest.)

Lerman, Daddario and Jackson are great in their roles as the main characters, but the older, more seasoned actors, like Pierce Brosnan as demigod trainer Chiron and Rosario Dawson as pissed-off goddess Persephone, are effective in their performances, while Uma Thurman as Medusa nearly stole the show.

My Take

In the end, Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief is a fun movie with some really good performances. Just enjoy the ride and try not to take it too seriously.

Rating: 4/5

Editorial

It’s getting pretty easy to predict where the T-Meter will land on RottenTomatoes.com before a movie comes out. Before even seeing the movie, I projected that The Lightning Thief would be at 50 percent. It’s currently at 49 percent.

It was a HUGE mistake to give the directorial job of the first Percy Jackson film to Chris Columbus because no matter how different the stories are, critics were going to pan it as a Harry Potter-ripoff. And then 20th Century Fox made an even more terrible error by advertising the movie as a new film by “The director of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”

But Columbus made several attempts to separate the two series. The biggest change was getting rip of a “cap of invisibility” that Athena had given her daughter Annabeth. The comparison between this and Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak would be a very easy target for critics licking their fingertips in anticipation of writing the cleverest insult to the film. Nevermind that the “cap of invisibility” was first mentioned more than 2,000 years ago.

The review industry needs to change. I’ve heard on multiple occasions that professional reviewers enjoy writing negative reviews more than positive ones. That is a shame. Their reviews are capable of priming audiences to hate movies that are not deserving of such wrathful dislike. They’ve created a media world in which being “intellectual” means not liking anything except those things that general audiences don’t like.

The Lightning Thief is a good movie. It’s not great, but it’s better than most sci-fi/fantasy tween movies that are released. Those who go in to see the film without any expectations will probably enjoy it for what it is, while those who anticipate a Harry Potter ripoff will see a Harry Potter ripoff.

Desmond’s mysterious appearance on Flight 815 has to be foreshadowing, or just a major clue, that the alternative timeline that the Losties we know — Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, and Sayid — are experiencing is not a true alternative timeline. Instead, it’s a hypothetical timeline that looks, like Desmond’s in “Flashes Before Your Eyes,” at what could happen if they don’t go to the island.

Admittedly, there are definite differences to what we’ve seen so far this season and what happened in that earlier episode.

First, Desmond is taken well into the past and well before he gets to the island–three years, if my math is correct. While  those on Oceanic Flight 815 seem to miss their chances to ever get to the island because the plane doesn’t crash.

Second, we haven’t seen “flashes” in Jack or Kate. They haven’t had a sudden recognition of where they’re supposed to be. However, we have seen them experience deja vu. Several times actually:

• When coming out of the restroom, Jack seems to recognize Kate and she seems to recognize him
• In “What Kate Does,” Kate sees Jack along the side of the road and there is a definite deja vu moment.
• Claire, out of nowhere, calls her baby “Aaron.”
• Jack looks at Desmond and asks in “LA X” and says, “Have we met?”

Finally, there’s Eloise Hawking in “Flashes Before Your Eyes.” She shatters Desmond’s hypothetical reality by telling him that he does not in fact marry Penny, and then the “greatest thing” he’ll ever do is push that button on the Island. There is no guide, or no sign of a guide, in Season Six so far.

But if this hypothetical timeline is all in the characters’ heads, much like Desmond’s was in “Flashes Before Your Eyes” and his other time jumping episodes, they won’t experience the need for a “guide” until they start making choices that will remove them from their fates.

Let’s use my theory about the hypothetical timeline to analyze the last episode, “What Kate Does,” specifically the off-island story to see if the “all-in-the-head” idea holds weight:

1. Kate’s biggest desire in going back to the island in Season Five was to find Claire.
2. When Daniel Faraday and then Jack propose the idea to blow up the atom bomb in order to reset the timeline, Kate is all for it because she believes it could help reunite Claire and baby Aaron off-island.
3. Kate somehow escapes from a U.S. marshal in an airport, a highly securitized environment, and ends up in a cab with (guess who?) Claire.
4. Kate goes to an auto shop where the guy helps her right away break out of handcuffs. She looks in Claire’s bag and then feels guilty. So what does she do? She drives back to where Claire jumped out of the car. Claire hasn’t called the police. She hasn’t even left the curb where she got out of the car. Huh?
5. Claire is unable to give up her baby for adoption. The family doesn’t want the baby. Remember Kate’s biggest wish is for Claire to raise baby Aaron herself.
6. Claire goes into labor, and guess who’s there with her? Kate. Just like on the island. However, Claire’s doctor is Ethan. This is the same man who kidnapped Claire on the island poking her with needles. Alarms were probably ringing in Kate’s subconscience, which is why, despite the possibility of it happening, Claire tells “Dr. Goodspeed” that she would rather not have her baby at that point.
7. Two cops, not federal marshals or FBI members, go looking for Kate after her airport escape. That’s what I call wishful thinking.

I think it’s too much of a coincidence that Kate is able to do exactly what she hoped she’d be able to do by helping Jack blow up that bomb, which leads me to believe that  when we see Jack’s flash-sideways that his ex-wife will show up at his dad’s funeral and they go grab a bite to eat and then end up together.

But this is where Desmond comes into play. We’ve been told that he is “special.” His conscience can be in multiple places. He has his constant. What are the chances Desmond plays the role of Eloise Hawking to Jack and Kate and the bunch? His goal will be to get them to accept their fates–accept who they are and why they need to be on that island.

“You can’t change it,” Desmond tells Charlie about the future in that masterpiece of an episode in Season Three . “You can’t change it, no matter what you do.”

Kate, Jack and Sawyer are meant to be on that island no matter what they do. How soon before they start seeing their fates in flashes before their eyes?

“Crackpot”  Theory (To steal Jay and Jack’s term)

If any part of my theory holds, what does that mean for Locke? Since he’s dead on the island, the alternative timeline isn’t happening in his head. What if Reborn Locke is experiencing the alternative timeline? Perhaps that’s why he seems so at ease with himself? Just a thought.

“Harry Potter” is a ripoff of previous stories. And those previous stories Harry Potter ripped off from were probably ripped off from even earlier sources.

Comparisons between “Potter” and “Percy Jackson” are obvious. Three friends. A magical home location. But I’ve read both series and enjoyed them both (I listen to the entire “Potter” series once a year) and that’s really where the comparisons end.

If “Percy Jackson” ripped off any story, it’s those Greek myths that the entire series is based upon.

I don’t know how good of a movie “The Lightning Thief” will be–I plan to see it Sunday. But, enough with the “Potter ripoff” claims. The Percy Jackson story stands on its own.

Maybe it was just me, but I hated being picked last whenever I played basketball, or some type of team sport in school or at playgrounds or even at the local 24 Hour Fitness.  Top two picks or else I’d get my feelings hurt. I wanted to be wanted.

It seems from tonight’s Lost episode, “What Kate Does,” as if Jacob and Reborn Locke (aka Man in Black) have made their first two selections in the all-out island war that has been looming for decades (or centuries or millennia): Jack and Sayid.

In the episode, we learn that the bodies of Sayid and “Jack’s sister,” as Dogen, the mysterious Japanese leader of the Others, calls Claire, have become “claimed” by someone — Reborn Locke we assume. And with this revelation, I think it’s safe to assume that Christian, Jack’s father, has also been “claimed” by the same adversary of Jacob. These people have been enlisted to do this man’s business.

And with an adversary like Sayid, it’s no wonder Dogen is not happy that Sawyer has decided to go rogue and leave the sanctuary of the Others’ temple. They need as many tough guys as possible, and James Ford is as tough as they come.

But this episode is a reminder that the entire series of Lost comes back to the first season. Hell, one of the first episodes of the series. “Two players. Two sides. One is light, one is dark,” Locke tells young Walt back on the beach while explaining the game of backgammon.

Well, it appears that the pieces are falling into place. Jack and Dogen fighting for Jacob. Sayid, Claire and Christian fighting for Reborn Locke.

Meanwhile, back in the 2004 alternative timeline,  we start to understand that certain fates seem to happen no matter what the circumstances. A fugitive Kate befriends a very pregnant Claire. They go to visit the prospective adoptive parents we have heard so much about, but Claire is told that an adoption isn’t going to happen. As in Season 1, Claire goes into premature labor when major stress hits–this time from the shock of a spurned adoption, not a plane crash. Kate rushes Claire to the hospital, where she is treated by none other than Ethan Rom, the creepy Other from first season who fell in love with Claire, but was killed by a vengeful Charlie. While on the island, he treats Claire. And it appears that in non-Dharma 2004, he, with the help of Kate, will be the one to deliver Claire’s baby.

(This adds to the belief that the divergent realities will come crashing together with help from some of the time-traveling outliers, particularly Desmond.)

Back on the island in the present, Kate realizes that she is powerless. Her hold over Jack has been greatly diminished because Jack himself has been greatly diminished. And her hold over Sawyer is nonexistent. He was in love with Juliet, and nothing Kate tells him will convince him of anything. She is as good as dead to him. She realizes it, which is why she sits at the dock in tears. She is as powerless as she’s ever been.

She’s starting to remind me a lot of Ben. Spurned by those she loves and without any power over the events to come, she could be a perfect recruit for the Reborn Locke. Especially after we see the infected Claire, the woman Kate tells Sawyer she went back to the island to find.

In fact, the Others seemed to have little problem letting Kate and Jin go tramping off into the Smoke Monster patrolled forest as long as the end result was Sawyer being back behind temple walls.

It’s side-choosing time on the island. The Losties aren’t talking about getting off the island anymore. They aren’t debating whether to push a button or not. They are all about surviving. And to survive, they are going to have to choose sides: “One is light. The other is dark.”

Unfortunately for Kate, neither side seems to want her. At least not yet. Which is why she might be very dangerous as the series comes to a close.

Other Thoughts and More Questions

• Dogen is one of the coolest people on the island. He tells Jack that he uses a translator in order to keep himself separated from those he leads. Sounds similar to the tattoo Jack received on his arm: “He walks amongst us, but he is not one of us.” I won’t be surprised if the Others’ leader meets an untimely end and Jack becomes the boss.
• Did Ben die and get claimed by the Man in Black back in 1977? I think it’s very possible. Perhaps that’s why the sweet boy who Sayid first met while being a prisoner of the Others became the lying lunatic that we now know.
• The Smoke Monster, or the Man in Black, or Reborn Locke, scanned Kate in Season 3, but did not kill her. This has to mean that he assumes Kate will join him, right?
• Why did the guards with guns move out of unarmed Jack’s way when he commanded them to step aside so he could speak to Dogen?

Lost season six starts where season five ended with Juliet banging on an atomic bomb in hopes destroying the island so that flight 815 never crashes, but also so that she can wake up safe in bed in Miami never having been recruited by the Dharma Initiative. The bomb goes off, and the screen goes white. The next scene is of Jack sitting on Oceanic 815, which is the same scene that has been shown time and again on Lost of flight attendant Cindy slipping Jack another bottle of vodka. Then the turbulence hits. Jack talks to Rose to comfort her. And then the turbulence passes. Oceanic flight 815 doesn’t crash. The camera pans down to the ocean and there’s the four-toed statue and the rest of the island under water.

The bomb worked. Jack, along with Kate and Sawyer are going home.

Lost comes back from commercial, the scene of Juliet banging on the bomb to make it explode is shown again. (Did ABC screw up their biggest season premiere ever?) But after the white flash, there is no cut to flight 815. There’s an eye. Kate’s eye. She’s in a tree, passed out. After some crafty gymnastics, Kate gets to the ground and discovers that she’s still on the island. She’s joined by Miles, Hurley, Jin, a bleeding-to-death Sayid, a confused-looking Jack, and a Sawyer furious that the bomb idea didn’t appear to work.

Wait. What?

Parallel universes.

I’ve long been fascinated by parallel universes, the idea that there are multiple nows. And it appears the exploration of these parallel universes is what will make up the storytelling for the final season of Lost. We’ll get to find out what would have happened to Kate, Sawyer and Jack if flight 815 landed safely at LAX. But we’ll also get to find out what will happen to them on the island. Well, maybe.

The creators of Lost seem to be prepared to answer the largest question throughout the entire series? “Are the survivors of Oceanic flight 815 better off stuck on the island?”

There is Kate, the never-happy-in-one-place beauty, who would have undoubtedly been convicted for murdering her stepfather had she not come home a celebrity. There is Sawyer, the lonely con-man, who had just killed an innocent man and whose life was definitely on a rapidly descending spiral. And finally, there is Jack, the meaning-to-do-good spinal surgeon who was going home to bury his father and drown his loneliness in a bottle of vodka.

And they weren’t the only ones.

Rose will probably be dead from cancer within the year.

Charlie will spend some time in prison after being busted on the airplane from trying to smuggle heroin.

And Jin and Sun clearly do not love one another as they do on the island.

However, the fortunes for Sayid and Hurley seem to be very different.

Hurley is “the luckiest man in the world, dude,” as he tells Sawyer. And Sayid seems very content with his life as he’s meeting up with a lady-friend (was that Nadia?) in Los Angeles.

Perhaps their lives take very different turns with no island in existence after the 1977 explosion.

I am done trying to predict how Lost will end. It’s like being in an airplane and having to place all of your trust that the pilots know what they’re doing. I have to trust that Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse know what they’re doing. All I can say is that I loved the premiere for season six and am completely flummoxed as to what will happen next.

Questions Answered and New Questions

• The man in black, the new John Locke, is the Smoke Monster. He’s just capable of taking the shape of dead people, it appears. But does that mean he’s also Christian Shepherd? Remember, we’ve seen the dead bodies of both Yemi and Locke, two people the Smoke Monster took the shape of, but Christian’s body was not in the casket. Perhaps Jacob can use the bodies of the dead?
• Was that Nadia in Sayid’s picture? If it was, it wasn’t the same photo that we’re used to seeing. Why?
• The crew carrying dead John Locke’s body were Jacob’s bodyguards. Why weren’t they with him?
• When Sayid woke up, was he still speaking with an Iraqi accent? Or is Jacob now using his body?
• The black ash keeps the Smoke Monster, or the Man in Black, away. That’s why the cabin was surrounded by ash in season four.
• How does 2004 Hurley still win the lottery without playing the numbers?
• Who is the Japanese leader of the Others? Did he replace Ben?
• Richard Alpert was in chains? Was the Black Rock a slave ship, or was it taking prisoners somewhere?
• Why the hell was Desmond on the plane and what happened to him?

While I think the new Apple iPad has potential to be a “revolutionary” device, as Steve Jobs claimed at this morning’s announcement of the new tablet computer,  I don’t think it’s as impressive as the expectations. It’s definitely not as revolutionary as the iPhone, or the iPod before that.

But I do see it as a really cool device with three great uses for the average Joe or Jane:

• As a textbook reader. If this device is designed properly for the college student, textbooks will be fully integrated. McGraw-Hill CEO Frank Lyman hinted at this possibility yesterday.

From the LA Times:

“Lyman’s bottom line: If the Apple tablet’s operating system is the same as the iPhone’s, the new device will be able to display at least 8,700 college textbooks ‘right out of the box.’ That’s because the company built an application last summer to let students view textbooks on their iPhones. Displaying the same pages on a tablet would be no sweat, technically.”

Instead of five, 10-pound textbooks, imagine a single, 2-pound (?) device that students can have with them at all times that contains all material in their textbooks. They’ll be able to highlight and make notes in margins. Perfect use.

• As a movie/tv-show player. Well I can’t imagine carrying the device around to listen to the latest Jay-Z, I can imagine carrying it around to watch the latest Dexter or Lost episode. I can imagine taking it to the gym and watching an episode on the 10-inch screen while running on the treadmill, or watching Inglorious Basterds and Moon (see it if you haven’t yet) during a 5-hour flight to Honolulu.

• As a magazine reader. The new GQ app available for the iPhone is wonderful (not just because Rihanna is nearly nude throughout) and would work great with the iPad. Instead of merely reading articles and missing out on color photos (as happens on nook eMagazines), I can imagine the iPad to allow magazine-like reading with a tap on the right or left to change pages. This could revolutionize this industry. Links to videos or past articles can be embedded in the articles themselves making magazines completely interactive.

What it’s not:

• An e-book reader. One of the qualities I love about my nook is the book-like experience that accompanies reading out of it. Except for textbooks, I don’t see the iPad replacing either the Kindle or the Barnes & Noble nook.
• An audio player. iPods and iPhones are great because they are small and portable and can fit in a pocket. The iPad won’t be able to do that.

What I hope it becomes:

• A mobile TV. One of the great detriments of the iPhone is its inability to play Flash-based videos. Hulu on the iPhone would be wonderful. Will the iPad be able to play Flash videos? I hope so, but as of today, Flash doesn’t play on this device.
• A mobile, streaming iTunes player (iTunes Cloud?). If this device is capable of playing all iTunes songs and videos from your home computer, or an online drive, it would change the need for a super large hard drive. 64 gigs is a decent-sized hard drive, but, currently, I have 450 gigs of music and movies on my Time Capsule used up.

My Take

The iPad is a super cool device. But is it something I want to run out and buy right away? I don’t think so. I do a lot of typing at different locales (Starbucks, work, Barnes & Noble) and a laptop and iPod work perfectly for me. I don’t want to read books off of a shiny screen. But as far as textbooks go, I think this device could be a huge bonus for students. Plus, as a movie player, the iPhone is great, but it is still pretty small.  The 10-inch screen on the iPad would be perfect for remote TV watching. It is a MAJOR dissapointment that Apple and Adobe still haven’t figured out how to get Flash on this device.  Once that happens, this device could be truly “revolutionary.”

I was sold on buying an eBook reader the moment I went through a box of old books and saw some 2004 hardcovers about the failure of the Bush presidency. I realized how much money, space and trees were wasted for books that would only be relevant for a year or so. It was then I made the pledge that the best thing I could do for my checkbook, my bookshelves, and for the environment was to go digital.

I had asked all my family members to buy me Barnes & Noble giftcards instead of presents so that I could buy a nook (it’s not capitalized). But, because she loves me, my girlfriend bought me one for Christmas. Because it was on backorder, I finally received it last Monday.

After a week of testing it out, here’s my verdict: I love it.

(Note: I’ve never used a Kindle, so I won’t say which one is better. Instead I’ll tell you why I wanted the nook and what I like about it so far. BN.com has a nice, but, obviously biased comparison between the two devices.)

Android-Based

One of the major selling points on the nook for me was it’s reliance on Google’s Android operating system. To me, this signaled that problems with the device could be corrected quickly.

In fact, sluggishness reported about the device’s start-up time when it was released in early December was corrected with an update by the end of the month.

And as Amazon just announced an app store for the Kindle, I think it’s assured that Barnes & Noble will do the same for its nook, but with more potential due to the operating system included in the device.

The Touch-Screen Pad

The most obvious difference between the nook and the Kindle is the inclusion of a color, touch-screen pad on the bottom of Barnes & Noble’s eBook reader. As a two-year-plus iPhone user, it’s really an odd experience using keypads on a cell phone, and it always seemed odd that there were keypads on the Kindle devices.

After a few, “Uh” moments with my nook, I didn’t have a problem operating the touch-screen pad. It’s responsive (not iPhone responsive) and it’s really easy to use. A click on the “n” button takes the user back to the homepage where the store, my library, and settings buttons can be found. A section called “the daily” is also on the color screen. eMagazines, and eNewspapers show up here when newly downloaded.

After a few seconds of non-use, the touch screen will fade to black and won’t distract from the e-ink screen.

I would like to be able to push down on the touch-screen pad to wake it up, but the “n” button suffices.

Readability

Of course anyone buying a Kindle or a nook would be mostly worried about how easy and natural-feeling the devices are on the eyes. The nook does a brilliant job. It’s e-ink screen is non-reflective, which is something I think would be a drawback to a shiny Apple tablet that people would want to use as an e-reader. The screen is very easy on the eyes.

(Right before starting on this post, I finished an hour-long reading session and felt as if I had just read out of a paperback.)

You can adjust font type and font size. I prefer the smallest font because it feels most natural to me.

The eMagazines currently available on the nook read beautifully. They are also very affordable. I subscribe to The New Yorker and to The Nation. Together, they cost about $7 per month, which is charged to my credit card automatically at the beginning of the next cycle. The magazines, once downloaded, appear in “the daily” section of the touch screen. You can explore the table of contents and then choose the article you’d like to read. In many ways, reading the article on the nook felt more inclusive than holding the paper version of the magazine. The New Yorker eMagazine includes all of the cartoons in each magazine issue as well.

As far as books go, the reading is great. There is one gripe I have, however. I am a section-by-section reader. I like knowing how many pages I have to go before I’m finished reading a chapter. I am currently on chapter 3 of the book The Inheritance by David Sanger. I would like to know when this section is over while I’m reading. Instead, the reader only shows how many pages I’ve read, and how many pages are in the book.

(Note: When I say “pages,” it often takes two or three screen changes to read a single page.)

The reader can bookmark a page and go on to another book or magazine.

Other Features

BN.com has more eBooks than Amazon.com. That is a huge bonus, even though most of the eBook bestsellers are available on both devices.

But Barnes & Noble has the physical store. During the weeks I was waiting for my nook, I went to a physical store to look around. For every book I knew I’d be interested in, I was able to use my iPhone BN.com app to see if it was available in the eBook store. For every one of these, I downloaded the first chapter and read that. Some of those books I knew I’d use in class and have to photocopy, so I bought the physical version. But for many, like The Inheritance, I just bought the eBook.

Owners are also supposed to be able to read for an hour free in the physical stores, but either this feature isn’t available yet, or I haven’t figured it out yet.

Also, nook owners are supposed to be able to loan a book for two weeks, but since I don’t know any other nook owners, this feature is meaningless to me.

My Take

There will always be room in my heart for physical books. I can’t imagine reading Harry Potter or the latest Dave Eggers or Sherman Alexie for the first time on an eBook reader. But there is also room for the digital versions of books and the nook does this service very well. I am looking forward to taking the device on vacation in August instead of packing five books in my bag. The cost savings from buying a $9.99 eBook instead of a $29 best seller should pay for the nook after about 15 reads. I recommend the nook highly and am excited for what update 2.0 will look like.

Author: Dave Eggers
Publisher: McSweeney’s
Pages: 335

Review:

A nonfiction book about what happens when post-9/11 policies meet post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans would have to be filled with diatribes toward President Bush, Governor Blanco, or Mayor Nagin, right? Especially a book by Dave Eggers, the wunderkind who wrote A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, one of the most well-loved and most-hated autobiographies in recent memory. A book with an entire paragraph of “fucks.” A book so mundane and tedious at times that readers stop reading after 150 pages because “the book is about nothing.”

(It’s also one of my personal favorites.)

But with Zeitoun, his latest piece of narrative nonfiction, Eggers plays everything evenly. He allows the story to astound and anger. He allows the reality of being Muslim in America to sink in deeply. He allows the feelings of betrayal to fester.

There are no rants. There is no cliché. There is no narrative outrage.

He tells the story in much the same way he did with What is the What?, the fictionalized autobiography of a Lost Boy from Sudan. He allows the story, not his remarkable writing take center stage. And with that, he’s produced one of the finest pieces of narrative nonfiction in recent memory.

Zeitoun tells the story of a Muslim family living in Uptown New Orleans. The family’s patriarch, Abdulrahman is a middle-aged man from a prominent Syrian family who runs a contractor business with his wife Kathy, a Muslim convert from the city.

The two make a great team. They run their business effectively. They run their family effectively. They deal with any ignorance regarding Islam effectively.

For them, everything is OK as long as they can work together.

Then comes Hurricane Katrina. It’s growing size—category 1 to category 2 to category 3 to category 4 to category 5—builds up the growing sense that something bad will happen both to the city and to the Zeitouns.

Being a contractor, Abdulrahman decides to stay in order to “check on the properties” despite his wife’s and his brother’s pleas to flee.

And once Katrina hits, Abdulrahman believes he’s been called by God to be in the city.

He rescues residents, clients, and even feeds two dogs stuck on the second floor of a neighbor’s house. He finds a working phone in one of his tenements and uses it to stay in touch with Kathy, who is stressed out by not being with her husband.

Then the calls stop.

Eggers’ writing is remarkable here. The reader can feel the worry in Kathy, her loss of self-control rise. And the heartbreak is palpable when she is combing her eldest daughter’s hair, clumps come out.

For weeks Kathy knows nothing of her husband’s fate. All her worries about the hurricane combined with the news reports about looting and murdering and the rising death toll in the city convince her that Abdulrahman is dead.

A mysterious phone call tells her otherwise.

And what her husband has gone through is worse than anything Kathy or Abdulrahman could imagine. Soldiers and police officers sent to protect and rescue citizens become objects of terrors themselves. Plus the sense of betrayal from a government they love leads to serious heartbreak and questions of identity.

Zeitoun is the best piece of writing I’ve read about Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans. It’s also the best piece of writing I’ve read about the effects of post-9/11 policies. The story of Abdulrahman Zeitoun is a searing indictment of the fear and suspicion stoked in this country by the former president, more than anything written by a political commentator from the left.

Zeitoun is an important book, and it’s also a wonderful read.

There’s a reason Star Wars continues to live in the hearts of fanboys everywhere… and it ain’t the prequels. The Star Wars Extended Universe is the best in science fiction, by far, and the announcements at Comic-Con 2009 proved that.

LucasArts discussed three developments that should give fans their Star Wars fixes until 2011 when the planned live-action television series is due to hit.

The Force Unleashed DLC – I played this game. Beat it. And haven’t picked it up since. In fact, I felt like selling it a few days ago. LucasArts released the trailer for The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition with the tag “What if the dark side won?” In the new downloadable content, the game will include additional Starkiller missions in which he becomes the Emperor’s apprentice and goes on a mission to destroy the rebellion. The trailer features appearances by both Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker.

Clone Wars: Season 2 – The computer animated cartoons were good. Real good. And this season promises to be more violent and feature the Mandalorians—Boba Fett’s people.

Star Wars: The Old Republic – The trailer for this MMO game might have convinced me to buy a PC. Amazing. The Old Republic takes place 1,000 years before Darth Vader and allows players to either be Sith or Jedi. The trailer is absolutely amazing and begs the question, “Why didn’t George Lucas make these prequels?” This trailer actually debuted at the E3 convention last month, but it was still breathtaking to watch on a gigantic high-def TV in the middle of Comic-Con’s exhibition area.

2. Lost: Season 6

Dominic Monaghan showed up to Saturday’s panel with “Am I Alive?” taped to his hand, which suggests we’ll see the return of Charlie next season. In addition, producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse said fans will have a good chance of seeing many characters that haven’t been in the show since season 1 (will we finally see the true relationship between Kate and the marshal?). They said the show’s final season will look a lot like the first with our favorite Losties running around the island not sure what’s going on. Lindelof also said that Jacob has not appeared as any other character on the island.

3. District 9

A huge “Humans only” sign hung near one of the entrances to the San Diego Convention Center during Comic-Con weekend, and that was apropos as a screening of the movie created great buzz. According to a Twitter post from Ain’t It Cool News’s Quints, the movie, which is about aliens being forced to live in an African slum, “is [f'n] awesome. gory as hell.”

And, in an interview with SyFy, director Neil Blomkamp tried to assuage worries that it’d be an “issue” movie: “I was very aware of not being heavy-handed with any sort of allegories or metaphors that were there and present in the foreground…So it’s like, … it sounds really bad to say, I suppose, but it’s a Hollywood film, set against a really violent and destructive background.”

4. Tron: Legacy

A year ago, in footage that resembled those of Big Foot, a video showed up on YouTube of two light cycles racing ending in the murder of the losing racer. The footage was awful, but remarkable at the same time because it was a signal that a movie I, and millions of other geeks, loved as a child would get a reboot. Well, that time has come. Disney released the footage caught on camera last year. And let me say, I’m very, very excited for this movie.

5. Battlestar Galactica/Caprica

SyFy finally set a release date the Caprica TV series—Jan. 22, 2010. It also showed a preview to the new Battlestar Galactica movie, The Plan, which focuses on how the Cylons came up with their plan of attack. During the panel, Edward James Olmos predicted that there’d be more BSG movies after The Plan, which he directed.

According to posts by AICN’s Herc, creator Ron Moore said that the show being ignored by the Emmy’s is “criminal” and producer David Icke said that Starbuck’s role at the end of the series should be compared to that of Gandalf the White from Lord of the Rings.

Here’s the trailer for The Plan:

Major FAIL Award: New Line Cinema

So I was stoked when I heard that the Blu-Ray for The Lord of the Rings would finally be released. STOKED. Then I learned that it’d only be the theatrical versions. Over the weekend, we learned that the extended editions, the better editions, won’t be released for another year. You kidding me? I already own three different versions of LOTR. The Blu-Ray would be No. 4.