Gimzoo

Future Cinema screenings of The Los Boys and Top Gun

"Future Cinema, the creators of Secret Cinema bring you this important breaking news.

On the 3rd and 4th of September of this year, Future Cinema in partnership with California Tourism will transform a secret London space in to the world of 80's California for immersive screenings of The Lost Boys and Top Gun.

Over 8000 of you will become Californians for a night and take part in the cinematic event of the year.

For more on this story go to welcometocalifornia.co.uk. Tickets will be available from Tuesday 2nd August at 1200 hours from the online ticket store here."

Link roundup

1. Arguments against attending cooking school.

2. XKCD on media reports of hacking. Penny Arcade on the 3DS.

3. Diablo III will allow players to auction off virtual goods for real money. I wonder if that will be a major selling point, or just a feature that benefits gold farmers (The Old Republic looks nice, but if I can make money while I play...).

George Martin's A Dance With Dragons (no spoilers)

A Dance With Dragons is easily the worst book in George Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. But I read 950 pages in a week, and often gave up sleep to do so, so it would be silly to call the book bad.

In retrospect, the flaws of the book were trumpeted by Martin himself. A third (or more) of the book is content that was meant to be included in A Feast for Crows. But that book ran too long, so the content was saved for this. In other words, it's b-material that never deserved to be its own book. Another third of the book was frequently described by Martin as the "Meereenese Knot" - - an inescapable plot hole he had worked himself into. His difficulty in solving that "knot" was the reason the book was so famously delayed. What he really needed was someone to tell him that the Meereen portion was trash and should be completely discarded. (Is there somewhere where he's defended the main character's actions in that part of the book? Because they certainly made no sense to me.)

The last two hundred pages more than made up for the rest of the book, though, and it will be a long, difficult wait for the next book.

Portal robots on sale

Atlas and P-body custom action figures by Chris Hooton on sale at eBay.

Doc Savage and Python Isle

I've always loved radio dramas, whether it was stumbling across them on the radio as a child, or listening to podcasts while teaching my boys to sleep in their own beds, or watching the excellent "Ham Radio" episode of Frasier. I was also delightfully frightened by the ghostly snakes in the Doc Savage movie.

So I eagerly accepted the chance to review a brand new Doc Savage audiobook called Python Isle:

For over 80 years, the name Doc Savage has meant thrills and excitement to millions of readers worldwide. Now, for the very first time, the legendary Man of Bronze comes to vivid life in "Python Isle", the first audiobook adventure from Radio Archives. In "Python Isle", a long-lost pioneer flyer returns to civilization accompanied by an exotic woman who speaks in a lost tongue. From his towering skyscraper headquarters in New York, through a dangerous Zeppelin journey to Cape Town, climaxing on a serpent-haunted island in the forbidden reaches of the Indian Ocean, Doc Savage and his iron comrades race to untangle a weird puzzle so deep that the only clues can be found in the Bible! Written by Will Murray and produced and directed by Roger Rittner - the same team that created "The Adventures of Doc Savage" radio series - "Python Isle" features dramatic narration by Michael McConnohie, cover art by Joe DeVito, and two exclusive audio interviews with Will Murray on the history of Doc Savage and the discovery of Doc Savage creator Lester Dent's long lost manuscripts. "Python Isle", an 8 audio CD set, is the first in a new pulp fiction audiobook series from Radio Archives.

I enjoyed the production as much as I'd hoped, but the bigger surprise was that my six year old son, who's grown up with video games, loved listening to it, too. If you like radio dramas, I highly recommend Python Isle.