SUCKER PUNCH (2011) Starring Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung, and Carla Gugino, among others. Directed by Zack Snyder. Produced by Warner Bros. Pictures, Legendary Pictures, Cruel & Unusual Films, and Lennox House Films. Genre: urban fantasy Format: DVD About SUCKER PUNCH (2011):

A young girl is institutionalized by her abusive stepfather. Retreating to an alternative reality as a coping strategy, she envisions a plan which will help her escape from the mental facility.

Source: Info in the About SUCKER PUNCH (2011) was taken from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0978764/ on 17/01/2013. Movie Trailer:

Movie Links: Official site Sucker Punch at Wikipedia imdb

Review:

The best thing I can say about this film is that the cinematography is brilliant! From the outset though, I can tell that this is a frilly little fantasy with a blonde instant-ninja chick and I didn't want to waste money and time going to the cinema to see that. And I was right. However they had this dvd on sale and it was so cheap that I recon then that it would probably be worth it with that cheap a price so it got bought. Because I went into it with such low expectations, there wasn't much to disappoint, so I wasn't. Besides, for something that cheap, I can't really complain about value for money, now can I? For that price it can be considered good entertainment with all my expectations realized. Silly. Check. Non-believable fantasy. Check. Nonsense weird plot. Check. Sword-weilding, gun-toting pretty blonde. Check. Good entertainment filler in a pinch for fantasy fanatics who likes blondes with no other source of entertainment. That was the upside. The down side, and I guess was the contributing factor why I resisted watching it to begin with, was the movie's smexing schoolgirls. Look at Sweet Pea, for christ sakes!! It smacks too much of pedophilesm to me. WTF!! And that brought the rating of this movie down to the boots.

The Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko Book 2 of The Night Watch series Read by Paul Michael Genre: urban fantasy Format: paperback & audiobook About The Day Watch:

The second book in the internationally bestselling fantasy series, Day Watch begins where Night Watch left off, set in a modern-day Moscow where the 1,000-year-old treaty between Light and Dark maintains its uneasy balance through careful vigilance from the Others. The forces of darkness keep an eye during the day, the Day Watch, while the agents of Light monitor the nighttime. Very senior Others called the Inquisitors are the impartial judges insisting on the essential compact. When a very potent artifact is stolen from them, the consequences are dire and drastic for all sides. Day Watch introduces the perspective of the Dark Ones, as it is told in part by a young witch who bolsters her evil power by leeching fear from children's nightmares as a counselor at a girls summer camp. When she falls in love with a handsome young Light One, the balance is threatened and a death must be avenged.Day Watch is replete with the thrilling action and intricate plotting of the first tale, fuelled by cunning, cruelty, violence, and magic. It is a fast paced, darkly humorous, haunting world that will take root in the shadows of your mind and live there forever.

Source: Info in the About The Day Watch was taken from GoodReads at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104160.Day_Watch on 28/05/2013.

Review:

Like Book 1, this book is a slow start too. Unfortunately, so is a few characters' tendencies to be too stupid to live (TSTL)! That, I did not appreciate! However the world building remains beautiful as ever! Similarly to Book 1, this book did not pick up until the very end. I don't know whether the goodness of Sergei Lukyanenko's story telling quality did not translate well into English thus it got lost in translation. Or I simply do not appreciate his story telling abilities in this particular book. Either way, I find the book dragging at times. But the beautiful world of Anton Gorodetsky and my incurable curiosity as to what happens next made me continue reading until the end. If I break down this book into it's constituent parts, it garners a score of less than three. However if I look at it as a whole, it feels like a 4. So I will give it a four in contradiction to my Empirical Evaluation. It seems like that the adage:

"the whole is more than the sum of its parts"

fits this book well.

Sanctuary TV series Season 1 Genre: urban fantasy Format: DVD box set Starring Amanda Tapping, Robin Dunne, Emilie Ullerup, Christopher Heyerdahl, among others. About Sanctuary TV series:

The first season of the Canadian science fiction–fantasy television series Sanctuary premiered on the Sci Fi Channel in the United States on October 3, 2008, and concluded on ITV4 in the United Kingdom on January 5, 2009, after 13 episodes. It follows the actions of a secret organization known as the Sanctuary, who track down a series of creatures known as abnormals, and then bring them to the Sanctuary for refuge. The main story arc of the season involves the Sanctuary working against the Cabal, an organization who seek to control all abnormals for their own gain. Amanda Tapping, Robin Dunne, Emilie Ullerup, and Christopher Heyerdahl are billed in the opening credits as the main cast.

Source: Info in the About Sanctuary TV series was taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctuary_%28season_1%29 on 09/01/2013. Show Trailer:

Show Links: www.sanctuaryforall.com imdb Sanctuary TV series at Wikipedia Review:

Now, I bought this dvd because I like the premise. I am an old urban fantasy fan, that is why I like the Supernatural and the Grimm TV shows. And I was hoping this TV series would be the same. But I've never seen a show with so bad an acting! Combine that with poor attention to detail and you get a show which wouldn't win prizes. I've only managed to go through the first disc and packed the whole season 1 box set away because it was just that bad. I was not surprised that the show was cancelled. What surprised me was that it went as far as 4 seasons. The episodes I've seen thus far were all night settings. The show was all dark and never seen the light of day. That gets boring after some time. What kind of world is it that is always night? Unless that is the premise of course, but that is not that kind of world in this show so that one got old. Real fast. The cinematography was not that bad. The mixing of live actors with the supernatural elements was seamless. That was good. But it could not cover for the fact that Emilie Ullerup couldn't act.

Undead And Unappreciated by Mary Janice Davidson Read by Nancy Wu Book 3 of Undead series Genre: urban fantasy Format: audiobook About Undead And Unappreciated:

Fans can't get enough of author MaryJanice Davidson and her topsy-turvy world of the undead with its newly-crowned queen, Betsy Taylor. Now, Betsy continues her reluctant reign while being bedeviled by family secrets... Most women would love to live as royalty, but Betsy has found that being vampire queen has more problems than perks, except for always being awake for Midnight Madness sales. It may be easy to find blood (yuck) in the dark of night, but try finding a strawberry smoothie. And employees at her nightclub Scratch have been giving her nothing but grief since she killed their former boss. Some people... But Betsy's "life" takes an interesting turn at a shower for her wicked stepmother, who lets it slip that Betsy has a long-lost half sister. Now twenty years old, this woman just so happens to be the devil's daughter - and destined to rule the world...

Source: Info in the About Undead And Unappreciated was taken from GoodReads at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/583924.Undead_and_Unappreciated on 18/10/12.

Review:

I was quite disappointed with the last book, so I sulked and stopped reading this series for a while. But seeing that I have the books in my smartphone, I eventually listened to Undead And Unappreciated. And then about chapter 11 or 12 I got royally annoyed by Betsy's stupidity, well, not only stupidity but more like stupid arrogance, and stopped listening to this book for several months. And that's how this book went, stop-start, stop-start. If I was reading this book as a paperback instead of listening to it in audiobook format, I would say that this book's pace is very slow indeed! However I do like the premise of a modern-day, totally american outlook queen of royal subjects stuck in medieval mindset. It makes for a volatile mix and a premise to all sorts of delicious scenarios. At the end of it, this book wasn't that great but like I said, I like the premise. So we'll wait and see if that premise alone would be enough to make me buy/read/listen to another book in this series down the line after I forgot the stupidity and slow pace.

Dead To Me by Anton Strout Book 1 of the Simon Canderous series Read by David DeVries Genre: urban fantasy Format: paperback & audiobook About Dead To Me:

A new urban fantasy featuring a man working on the right side of law-with talents that come from left field. Psychometry-the power to touch an object and divine information about its history-has meant a life of petty crime for Simon Canderous, but now he's gone over to the good side. At New York's underfunded and (mostly) secret Department of Extraordinary Affairs, he's learning about red tape, office politics, and the basics of paranormal investigation. But it's not the paperwork that has him breathless. After Simon spills his coffee on (okay, through) the ghost of a beautiful woman- who doesn't know she's dead-he and his mentor plan to find her killers. But Simon's not prepared for the nefarious plot that unfolds before him, involving politically correct cultists, a large wooden fish, a homicidal bookcase, and the forces of Darkness, which kind of have a crush on him.

Source: Info in the About Dead To Me was taken from GoodReads at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1823237.Dead_To_Me?ac=1 on 16/04/2013.

Review:

I've had this book in my TBR (to be read) shelf for like forever. I keep picking it up and putting it down. It just can't keep my attention. My mind keeps wandering while I'm reading this book. Safe to say that the story telling quality was not compelling. What I didn't expect was for Simon to suddenly go all-out stupid in Chapter 12. It seems like he lost all sense of self-preservation all of a sudden. No, that was not it. It seems like he was determined to get killed and everybody else around him. WTF!?! I mean, his life sucks and all, but to get too stupid to live (TSTL)? I didn't see that one coming. He was okey for the first ten chapters. I don't know what happened but it looked like he had a lobotomy in Chapter 12. I had to have frequent breaks from the stupidities. So you couldn't call this book in any shape or form "fast paced" at all. So much so that when I finished this book it was with a sense of relief rather than looking forward to the next book in the series. I was relieved to finally get done with the stupids. Then the plot... what plot? The entire book is just a retelling of about two weeks of Simon Canderous' life with no thought for plot nor story structure, and that's it! So we read about how Simon ran around from danger to danger and being stupid and got saved by sheer dumb luck. While the bad guys stupidly stumbled themsleves into captivity... Yeah, not much of a plot. The world building was sound though. No apparent cracks that I could see. I could totally believe that a hidden world like the one of Simon Canderous could exist side-by-side ours. I also like the premise of an investigative supernatural. But then again that is my favourite genre, just as the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher and the Grimm TV show are my favourites! It's just Simon's stupidity after stupidity after stupidiy which ruined it for me.

Deadly Decisions by Kathy Reichs Book 3 of the Temperance Brennan series Read by Lorelei King Genre: crime fiction Format: paperback & audiobook About Deadly Decisions:

It is a beautiful Spring day and in the quiet woods of the FBI's headquarters at Quantico, forensic anthropologist, Dr. Temperance Brennan, is teaching a body recovery course when she is urgently called back to Quebec. A gruesome duty awaits her: a biker war is raging and two of the foot soldiers have blown themselves up. The only person qualified to make sense of what remains is Tempe. When the body of a nine-year-old girl is wheeled into the morgue - slain in biker crossfire - Tempe vows to lend her skills to fight this evil, and enters the dark underworld of the bikers.

Source: Info in the About Deadly Decisions was taken from Goodreads at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17566551-deadly-decisions on 04/03/2013.

Review:

I like it that the book series gives me an alternative scenario to a well-loved story. An alternate Bones story. What remains to be seen is whether I would like that alternate story or not... After the disappointment with Death Du Jour I wasn't planning on reading this book. However Deadly Decisions is already loaded into my smartphone and the paperback is already sitting in my TBR (to be read) shelf. So it got read... I really did not like Brennan's unprofessional tendency of divulging information of an on-going investigation in Death Du Jour. And unfortunately that persisted into this book which leads me to believe that this kind of behaviour might be something that can be expected through out the series on top of her TSTL (too stupid to live) tendencies.

So our heroine knows exactly how dangerous the bikers are. She saw the results of their handiwork on her slab table. Not only that, she'd read/saw the Carcajou files on them. So what does she do? Runs headlong into their den with no back-up, on her own, without telling anybody endangering not only herself but people around her. Stupid much?

And I really do not like that. At all! It does not endear the main protagonist to me! And that also earned the character development's rating, a nose dive into the depths of the ocean. I wasn't so harsh in previous books' reviews maybe because I wasn't feeling too miffed. And maybe because Sergeant Detective Andrew Ryan wasn't too bad. Or the entire book just wasn't that annoying. Anyway, in this book, it had it!

Would I recommend this series? No. But I would recommend the Bones TV show.

Hard Eight by Janet Evanovich Book 8 of the Stephanie Plum series Narrated by Lorelei King Format: audiobook Genre: crime fiction chicklit About Hard Eight:

Fugitive Apprehension Agent Stephanie Plum has a big problem on her hands: Seven-year-old Annie Soder and her mother, Evelyn, have disappeared. Evelyn's estranged husband, Steven, a shady owner of a seedy bar, is not at all happy. During the divorce proceedings, he and Evelyn signed a child custody bond, and Steven is demanding the money guaranteed by the bond to find Annie. The money was secured by a mortgage on Evelyn's grandmother's house, and the True Blue Bonds Bail Agency wants to take possession of the house. Finding a kidnapped child is not an assignment for a bounty hunter. But Evelyn's grandmother lives next door to Stephanie's parents, and Stephanie's mother and grandmother are not about to see their neighbor lose her house because of abduction. Even though Stephanie's plate is full with miscreants who missed their court dates, including old nemesis and violent drunk Andy Bender and an elusive little old lady accused of grand theft auto, she can't disappoint Grandma Mazur! So she follows the trail left by Annie and Evelyn-- and finds a lot more than she bargained for. Steven is somehow linked with a very scary Eddie Abruzzi. Trenton cop and on-again, off-again fiance Joe Morelli and Stephanie's mentor and tormentor, Ranger, warn Stephanie about Abruzzi, but it's Abruzzi's eyes and mannerisms that frighten Stephanie the most. Stephanie needs Ranger's savvy and expertise, and she's willing to accept his help to find Annie even though it might mean becoming too involved with Ranger. Stephanie, Ranger, Lula (who's not going to miss riding with Ranger), and Evelyn's lawyer/laundromat manager set out to find Annie. The search turns out to be a race among Stephanie's posse, the True Blue Bonds' agent, a Rangerette known as Jeanne Ellen Burrows, and the Abruzzi crew. Not to mention the fact that there's a killer rabbit on the loose! Strap on your helmet and get ready for the ride of your life. Hard Eight. The world of Plum has never been wilder.

Source: Info in the About Hard Eight was taken from at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6425.Hard_Eight on 21/10/2012.

Review:

I have to tip my metaphorical hat to Lorelei King! She's a true professional! Words are clear and distinct. Diction, pauses and enunciations perfect. I especially like the accents and voices she gives the characters! And I also agree with her interpretation of the book! I would listen and buy another Lorelei King audiobook again. So I was a bit disappointed with the last book in this series so I stopped listening to Stephanie Plum for a while and picked up another audiobook. After sometime, I forgot my ire and re-listened to this audiobook again simply because it was already loaded into my Samsung phone. Eventually I finished the book... Stephanie's stupid factor increased tenfold in this book so much so that it is no longer believable, no matter one does, that a being this stupid could live. Not even with sheer dumb luck. Stephanie is just too stupid to live! So you go apprehend somebody, and you leave the key in the ignition?? Not once, but twice! And guess what? The FTA (failure to appear) drives away with your CRV... The stupidity is reaching new heights that it sank the believability factor down to the bottom of the ocean! If you are going to read/listen to this book, read it/listen to it for the humour, not for the story nor the story telling quality. Because otherwise you will be bitterly disappointed.

Death Blows by DD Barant Read by Johanna Parker Book 2 of The Bloodhound Files series Genre: urban fantasy Format: paperback & audiobook About Death Blows:

FBI profiler Jace Valchek was pulled into this parallel realm to hunt for Aristotle Stoker, a human serial killer who preys on vampires and werewolves. Now she works for the National Security Agency of the Unnatural States of America - and her boss is a vampire. At a bizarre crime scene, Jace finds a bloodsucker murdered by magic, fried to the bone and dressed in the costume of the comic book hero the Flash - a character who isn't supposed to exist here. Comic books have been outlawed for their powers, including crossover spells like the one that transported Jace to this world. Soon, she's following a trail of dead bodies into the sinister underworld of black-market comics - where a deranged madman gives new meaning to the term "super-villain."

Source: Info in the About Death Blows was taken from GoodReads at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6781162-death-blows on 26/10/2012.

Review:

Okey, so in Book 1, the main protagonist, Jace, had the tendency to be too stupid to live (TSTL) but I hadn't expected it to be compounded a million times over in this book. I guess I was being too optimistic. The TSTL was annoying like hell! So much so that I had to have breaks from it or I'll throw the damned book against the wall. Which made the pace of this book quite slow even with the convenience of the audiobook edition. Maybe for those readers with a whole lot more patience than I have will read this book quicker. And maybe for those audiobook listeners who does not read the paperback at the same time would find this book a little faster than I did. Maybe... The plot depended on Jace being stupid to create a story. Safe to say I wasn't terribly impressed. However, if you learn to ignore that fact, it did have a story where the main protagonist managed to save the world against all odds. I like Johanna Parker's narration though. And would continue to buy audiobooks by her. I am obviously an old fan of hers, so that opinion might be more than a little biased. Anyway, at the end of it, I am a fan of vampires and shapeshifters and this world have those in spades, but I don't think I would be buying any books in this series or of this author. If ever, I would borrow it from the library.