For the final week, I wanted to give my opinion into Firefly, but since the copies at the library were out, I decided to look into a series I wanted to look back into years ago. Star Wars, the first trilogy. Looks back into this franchise, a lot of the designs looked like a sci fi westers and samurai film.
The Jedi was similar tot he samurai, the costumes of the storm troopers and Darth Vader are reminiscent of the oriental armor. Even the aliens like Jabba have sort of a Buddah asian feel to them. I got the western feel from characters like Han Solo, especially the bar scene in the first episode with him and Greedo.
 I now know how many movies has influenced the entire franchise. I even found traces of inspiration of Flash Gordon in the floating city in the second episode. I would have never wouldv'e guessed that as a kid.
 Looking back, I haven't watched these films in a long time and I now have a different look on them. Using stuff you have watched as a kid can inspire your imagination and ideas for the future and can help create your own worlds and stories.
There is a bit of fantasy in the series as well like the landscapes, creatures, and the force is like some kind of inner magical element. In other words, Star Wars is pretty much everything rolled into one giant space epic, and that's why it is so popular. It has something for everyone, drama, action, art, comedy and great story telling.
So that's it, thought this would be a good idea for the last week considering it is a classic, but I thought I would try giving it a good look and dissect to see why it was so popular. I just hope the next Star War Films will be better, probably not though because of bring back Darth Vader and elderly Han Solo, but who knows?

This week I decided to watch District 9 which reminded me of dancing with wolves but with aliens. It's about a giant spaceship of humanoid shrimp aliens that have landed on earth in Africa and are wanting to go back to their homeland. Meanwhile, a bureaucrat decides to take a look at the aliens who have seemed to adapt with the Africans third world environment  he gets sprayed by a strange liquid made by one of them and starts to turn into one of them. now on the side of the aliens, he accepts to help them by going against the military so he can get his body back to normal. While the concept is different, the premise is very similar to Dancing with Wolves, a guy joins a troubled outside force to oppose against his own kind. It woks with this film and the alien designs are cool. It's not often you see prawn aliens living with a bunch of Africans. Overall, the effects and designs are cool, but the plot could've used more differentiation to make it a bit more fresher.

This week I decided to see the movie Dark City, a science fiction noir film. It takes place in a city made up of other cities like New York, London and whatnot, that way it gives the viewers something familiar but different looking. It stars a man who wakes up in a murder scene where he is accused of the action and is chased by an unknown clan of black dressed people. Throughout the film, he discovers the mystery of the city and a new power he is given. He meets a doctor who secretly works for the clan, a girl he falls in love with and tries to find a path to a fictional paradise called shelled beach. It's pacing and mysteries keep the viewers interested for most of the time and the eerie design of the alien black dressed clan members definitely keeps you on edge the entirety of the film. The ending fight scene between him and the leader was a bit goofy, but it was so short that it didn't really effect the rest of the film that much. I do recommend this film who is a fan of the noir style who is looking for a completely different and fictional take on it. It's creative concepts do make you wonder what else we could do in other films inspirationally.

So this week, I chose to do "Empire Star" by Samuel R. Delany for this weekends reading. I have to say, coming into it, I thought it would have an average story, like the main character, Comet Jo, would go on a quest for the Jewel or whatnot. Boy is my mind scrambled beyond belief. The Gist is that there is an 18 year old boy named Jo who comes across a being named jewel is seems to be a crystalized creature called a Tritovian. After that, he leaves his hometown to go to the Empire Star to deliver a message and gets in all sorts of adventures and quests and discoveries. It's kind of hard to explain but the novel sort of ends abruptly, there were a a few pages left of some events that seemed scrambled. At that point, I tried to piece it together, but because of my hefty amount of work, I would try it again later.
So yeah, it definitely was a different kind of book, it does try something new and it did keep my interest for a while.

unfortunately, I did not get enough time to read Snow Crash, maybe when I get my projects finish I will begin to read it, right now my work is overflowing through my face.

This weekend, I read a bit of, The Stars My Destination. I didn't read the entirety of it, but I read enough to know the main character and the purpose of his goal. The main character, Gully Foyle, is the last survivor of a ship called the Nomad and is left for dead there. When a space carrier, Vorga, ignores his plea for help, Foyle goes on a quest for revenge, so from here on out, the actions he does will title him an antihero.
 I got to the part where he unsuccessfully plans an assault on the Vorga, the ship that ignored him and gets captured. So, I'm about to read the part where he goes down the dark labyrinth like prison they send him to after trying to get information about the Nomad. It's pretty good so far. Looks like a long  read, so I'll try to have most of it read by next week.

So this weekend, I read the rest of the Golden Compass. The concept behind of it was cool, apparently people live with these shape shifting animal beings called deamons whose lives are linked to their owners, so if they die, their owners die and vice versa. It's about a girl named lyra who is given a pocket watch by his uncle that can answer any question. She escapes an evil women named Mrs Coulter with Gyptians that head toward the north and befriends a polar bear wearing armor to help free children from experimentation.

I have to say this is definitely different that your typical fantasy story, it takes place in a world similar to ours, but yet still has a fictional feel to it. I'd recommend if to people who want to read a fantasy book with an imaginative world to it.

I've recently read The book, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, I have read it before and didn't finish re reading it, but my view on it was different than what I remembered when I was young, I think about 10 or 12 is when I last read it? I think my impression of it when I was a boy was I didn't think much of it, I just remembered a magical wardrobe that teleports these kids to a fantasy world with a talking lion and a sadistic witch with the power of ice.
I also don't remember if I enjoyed it or not, but I did see a play of it and later on the theatrical movie which I did enjoy more than it's sequels. Reading it recently about some chapters in, I find that it is a interesting book, the world is imaginative although a bit cliche since I have been reading many other fantasy throughout my life. There's talking animals, mythical creatures and medieval like settings, I have all seen it before. I found the characters to be interesting though, the kids each have there own distinct personality, the villain is pretty fun too, she manipulates one of the main characters to join her temporarily and Aslan is still the badass I remember. Picking a Lion was a good choice because I always thought they represented a top power, the king of the food chain. Overall, I may finish reading it, but because this class requires reading about every week I might as well put it on hiatus.

So this time I read the hobbit again, it's been a long time since I last read it, so I gave it a go again because I remember enjoying it the first few times reading it. The story follows a hobbit named Bilbo Baggins who is told about a treasure at a dragon's lair by a wizard named Gandalf. The story is about the adventure he has and what he encounters along the way, he fights monsters and meets friends to help him and his band of dwarves along the way. It's a simplistic story but it works in many way because of the memorable characters such as the dwarves, Bilbo himself, Gandalf and even Thorin the dragon serves as great villain to the story. Maybe it's the way it's written but even with the basic story, it's still fun to read. Reading it again makes me hope that the upcoming film adaptation will be as good.

This week I decided to choose the Japanese novel, Kwadain which is a collection of short stories. Japanese horro seems to be a bit different from the kind we get here in America. The stories in this novel tend to focus on souls, love and reincarnation. One story featured a man killing a duck because of his intense hunger and had realistic nightmares of a women asking why he killed her husband. The next day, the wife of the duck comes before him and mutilates herself and the man became a priest for the rest of his life.
It definitely is strange considering what I am used to here, but it is a nice change although other stories seemed a bit too upbeat to consider them horror. One of those was a story of a man's wife dying and she promises she'll come back, years later, she does, and they get married, and it seems to end there. It's not my cup of teat, but there are people who do like this kind of stuff. All in all, it was an interesting read, but not my favorite of what I read so far in the class.

So I just finished the novel, Interview with a Vampire. I have to say, this was a nice new perspective to the entire vampire genre. This books is more of a self documantation than a horror novel. It stars a vampire named Louis talking about how he became a vampire and how his life was changed after that. There's drama, action and humor in this tale and describes how tough it is being a vampire which is a new thing at the time this novel was made.

 One part I especially found disturbing but kind of cute was the girl named Claudia, a girl who waas transformed into one of them and because she never aged in appereance, the fact that she spoke in such mature words but yet such a young body gives this novelsome interesting characters.

The vampire Lestat on the other hand, who is the one who turned Louis, is quite the sidekick/villain. His insane and dark personality make him a ominous but fun character to enjoy throughout the book.

Overall, it's a nice change of pace to the vampire genre, and I would definitely recommend it.

So I just finished Monster Island by David Wellington and went in expecting a typical zombie horror novel filled with people trying to escape a zombie apocalypse. I was only half right, there are too separate stories in this novel, one involves a man who has his daughter taken away by women who is a warlord from Somolia and will give back his daughter if he gets some AIDS medication in New York.

That story arc has it's moments when the main character is fighting alongside the warlords assistants in the zombie infested city and the writer details every emotion he is going through while doing this for his daughter. The other story arc is the most interesting, it features a man who has become one of the dead, but still has his conscience. David does a fantastic job on creating what it's like being a person from the undead from the characters point of view, focusing on what it's like being hungry and being hunted by survivors, I wouldn't mind if the whole book was about it.

In the end though, it's worth a read for both storyline, they do intersect throughout the book and each chapter does get more intense. I might as well read the sequels to this to see if they're any better. If you're a zombie fan looking for a book that does things in a different point of view, then I would give this a go.

Testing to make sure this works.