A kind review

Erik Schmidt, over at the fantastic site Learn Tabletop RPGs, was kind enough to review Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, and had these kind words to say about my book. Thank you, Erik.

Product placement in the National Parks

It’s been said by more than Ken Burns that the national parks are America’s best idea. In “National Parks Adventure,” opening at the Museum of Science’s Mugar Omni Theater on Friday, narrator Robert Redford makes the same claim. But after this hokey and commercialized IMAX road trip, you’ll be thinking the best idea might have been to stay at home. Read the rest of my Boston Globe review.

Geek out in the Galapagos

Sometimes, we watch a documentary to be sucker-punched by its investigative uppercut. Other times, it’s to be awed by nerdy info and eye-candy. The IMAX science museum/aquarium movie “Galapagos 3D: Nature’s Wonderland" may not be subtle or particularly brilliant. But this science-y doc sates that second desire just fine. Read the rest of my review of “Galapagos 3D: Nature’s Wonderland" for the Boston Globe.

Star Wars -- Shakespeare Mashup: A Review of Ian Doescher’s ‘William Shakespeare’s Tragedy of the Sith’s Revenge’

In “The Empire Strikes Back,” Yoda admonishes his apprentice, Luke Skywalker, saying, “Wars not make one great.” Later, in “Return of the Jedi,” he quips, “When 900 years old you reach, look as good you will not.”

In case you didn’t catch on, Yoda inverts his syntax. In other words, Yoda practically speaks Shakespearean.

And in Ian Doescher’s best-selling “Star Wars” / Shakespeare mash-ups, so does every character in George Lucas’s science-fictional universe of Wookiees, droids and the Force.

Read the rest of my review of Ian Doescher’s ‘William Shakespeare’s Tragedy of the Sith’s Revenge’ for the New York Times.

Computer games can save your life

How was your 1980s childhood affected by early computer games like The Bard’s Tale, Ultima III: Exodus, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein and Elite? In my review of the new memoir "Gamelife" by Michael W. Clune in the New York Times Book Review, I discuss how Clune's story shows that games can offer a way to navigate the perils of a baffling preadolescence.

All part of the NYTBR's coverage of nerdy/comics/gaming books. 

A review of RoboCop 2014: Not as Good as RoboCop 1987

In which I watch RoboCop (2014) and remember RoboCop (1987), and conclude that while the remake isn't without its qualities, it has less to say than the original, and, worse, is not as funny. I also break down the history of our anxiety about robots and A.I., from Metropolis to The Terminator to Her. It's all over at BoingBoing.

Desolation of Tolkien: My BoingBoing review of Smaug

Like with the trilogy's first episode, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, this next chapter even further widens the viewfinder beyond the fates of Bilbo (Martin Freeman), Gandalf (Ian McKellen) and the Company of dwarves, lead by Thorin (Richard Armitage).

If you recall, their journey thus far took our heroes from Bilbo's hobbit hole in the Shire, past some trolls, under the Misty Mountains, escaping a seemingly infinite supply of goblins, ending just shy of Mirkwood forest, with the Lonely Mountain, their target, towering in the distance. We last left them after they'd battled orcs and wargs, having just been rescued by eagles from flaming trees and the brink of doom.

An Unexpected Journey took 182 minutes to tell, and covered only about 125 of Tolkien's 375 pages (in my version of the book, anyway). The Desolation of Smaug is slightly shorter, but still runs a hefty 161 minutes, and takes us about 2/3 of the way through the story. Where exactly the film leaves Bilbo, Thorin et al, I won't say here.

If part 1 plodded, then part 2 flies. But in what directions! And, quite possibly, asunder.

Read more of my review of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug on BoingBoing.

Funny or Disgusting? A Review of "Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie"

TIM AND ERIC”S BILLION DOLLAR MOVIE

Directed by: Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim

Written by: Heidecker, Wareheim, Jonathan Krisel, Doug Lussenhop, Jon Mugar

Starring: Heidecker, Wareheim, Robert Loggia, Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Zach Galifianakis

Running time: 93 minutes

At: Kendall Square

Rated: R (nearly every bodily and sexual function and dismemberment possible)

by Ethan Gilsdorf

[originally appeared in the Boston Globe]

If you enjoy the off-kilter, sketch-based humor of “Kentucky Fried Movie,’’ Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life,’’ and anything that cranks up the Farrelly brothers’ raunch factor to 11, then “Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie’’ should please you.

Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, co-creators of the TV series “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!,’’ wrote and directed this celebration of bad taste. The movie has Heidecker and Wareheim playing Hollywood newbie filmmaker morons, who have squandered a billion of the Schlaaang Corporation’s dollars on a rom-com dud. Tommy Schlaaang Jr. (played by cantankerous Robert Loggia) wants his money back. Tim and Eric shave their soul patches, toss their designer jeans, and fire their spiritual guru, a pony-tailed Zach Galifianakis (uncredited), who pops up in Obi Wan-like visions to say, “I’ve got some poetry about regret I’d like to share with you.’’

Eric and Tim, our wholly unlikable and clueless protagonists (think “Dumb and Dumber’’), skip town, determined to make back that billion dollars they owe by resurrecting the Swallow Valley Mall, deep in the middle of somewhere. Our heroes, remade now as the Dobis PR company, literally jog across the country, as Aimee Mann’s “Two Horses’’ plays and their journey is intercut with slow-motion footage of stallions.

They arrive at the decrepit, squatter-filled mall to find stubborn entrepreneurs selling swords and recycled toilet paper. The mall is run by creepy Damien Weebs (Will Ferrell, also uncredited), who occupies himself in a back room endlessly watching “Top Gun’’ on VHS. Among the best performers is John C. Reilly (yes, uncredited) as the sickly, sore-covered Taquito, Damien’s henchman, abandoned by his family at the mall decades ago. “Also,’’ Damien warns, before handing over the operation to Tim and Eric, “You’re going to have to look out for the wolf.’’ A wolf stalks the mall. And the “Yogurt Man’’ haunts the defunct frozen yogurt kiosk.

You could view all of this as a bold, thinly veiled critique of the current economic depression. Or an exegesis of a nation driven by cable access infomercials and self-help shams. Or you could simply enjoy - if enjoy is the right sentiment - this gross-out comedy that graphically depicts masturbation, defecation, body piercing (you can guess which parts), grannies getting their fingers chopped off, and every smooshy and farty sound-effect possible. See it in the right sick frame of mind, and “Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie’’ can be shockingly and terribly hilarious. Or not.

A Review of Death Row Narrative "Anatomy of Injustice"

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

‘Anatomy of Injustice’ by Raymond Bonner

BOOK REVIEW

UPDATE TO THIS REVIEW: Edward Lee Elmore -- a black man who faced execution after he was wrongly convicted of killing a white woman in South Carolina -- was released from prison today after serving nearly thirty years. His release comes after numerous appeals and as the direct result of a plea deal negotiated by his attorney. Elmore's story is the subject of Raymond Bonner's new book ANATOMY OF INJUSTICE. Bonner, who was present at the Greenwood SC courthouse at the time of the announcement, said “It can hardly be called justice when, in order to obtain his freedom, a man had to plead guilty to a crime he did not commit.”

BOOK REVIEW

For those seeking more ammunition for their battery of anti-death-penalty arguments, look no further. “Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong’’ is Raymond Bonner’s accomplished and meticulously researched investigation into a murder case that, as the clumsy title suggests, was egregiously bungled.

In 1982, in Greenwood, S.C., Edward Lee Elmore, 23, is accused of killing an elderly widow.

Elmore had occasionally done odd jobs for the victim. When her body is found in her closet, stabbed dozens of times and possibly raped, Elmore is fingered as the prime suspect, despite a notable lack of physical evidence linking him to the crime.

The small-town police officers, prosecutors, and medical examiners work together and cram his arrest, trial, conviction and eventual sentencing to death into three months - astonishingly rushed, given that most capital cases drag out for years. Elmore’s legal team is described as, at best, dispassionate, and at worst, incompetent. Bonner complains they did “virtually nothing.’’

Thickening the plot and heartbreak: The accused is poor, African-American, and mentally disabled, facts that seem never to bother the judges and juries over Elmore’s 27-year trail of legal appeals. He could not “tell time or draw a clock. He didn’t understand the concept of north, south, east, and west or of summer, fall, winter, and spring.’’ He could not do the elementary math to keep a bank account. Cross-examined on the stand, he simply replies, “I didn’t - ’’ “I couldn’t . . .’’ “No, sir, I wasn’t there.’’

A longtime reporter for The New York Times, where he shared a Pulitzer Prize, and a former New Yorker magazine staff writer, Bonner writes prose best described as workaday. It’s only in part two, when he introduces his narrative’s plucky heroine, Diana Holt, an idealistic lawyer with a sketchy criminal past who becomes Elmore’s guardian angel, does Bonner risk literary flourishes. “What the hell am I doing?’’ he has Holt thinking as she leaves Texas and her children behind to work at the South Carolina Death Penalty Resource Center. “Am I a horrible mother?’’

Holt makes a compelling protagonist. We invest in how, and if, she will get Elmore off death row. True-crime junkies also will be entertained by prurient details, from descriptions of the victim’s bludgeoned body to baggies of hair samples and blood-spattered jeans. We read transcriptions of courtroom proceedings, and we delight as witnesses are caught in lies. Neophytes to criminal law (this reviewer included) learn that despite new evidence proving a person’s innocence, fresh trials are rare. In this case, lawyers must prove not that Elmore was not the killer, but that his “constitutional rights had been violated.’’

If, voice-wise, “Anatomy of Injustice’’ can at times fall flat, as a piece of reporting, the book is masterful. Bonner builds the story, and his argument, carefully, rarely editorializing, mixing in a précis of capital punishment in the United States, and letting readers draw their own conclusions. And while Bonner’s investigation does not prove Greenwood’s law enforcement officials framed Elmore, he does make a convincing case that justice was not served. “Elmore’s story raises nearly all the issues that mark the debate about capital punishment: race, mental retardation, bad trial lawyers, prosecutorial misconduct, ‘snitch’ testimony, DNA testing, a claim of innocence.’’

Bonner’s book is an important addition to the body of evidence against the death penalty. As he argues, our system of justice thrives on conflict. In any trial, among the cast of conviction-seeking prosecutors and appellate lawyers hoping for a break, there must be winners and losers. “[T]he adversarial nature of it outweighs justice,’’ Bonner writes. “Justice often gets lost.’’

And while it would be unfair to reveal here whether Holt and Elmore win, beyond a shadow of a doubt it is worth reading “Anatomy of Injustice’’ to find out.

Baroque, or bloated: My review of the new Neal Stephenson novel "REAMDE"

[Originally appeared in the Boston Globe]

BOOK REVIEW

Techno thrills and gunplay, spelled out in great detail

Neal Stephenson’s “Reamde’’ opens with a target practice session at the Forthrast clan’s annual Thanksgiving gathering. Various firearms - shotguns, Glocks, assault rifles - are discharged into an Iowa pasture. Fun for the whole family.

The spasm of gunfire is prophetic. By the time Stephenson’s world-girdling novel has reached its exhaustive conclusion, countless rounds have been fired. As Stephenson notes in his acknowledgments, he required the services of a “ballistics copy editor’’ to fact-check the inner-workings of every Kalashnikov and bolt-action .22.

Stephenson is already notorious for churning out tomes sprawling in both page count and plot. But fans of his genre-blending touch that often welds historical to science fiction with a bead of cyberpunk might find themselves displeased with the ride of this narrative machine. Whereas “Snow Crash’’ and “Cryptonomicon’’ commingled code breaking, memetics, and nanotechnology with Sumerian myth, Greek philosophy, and economic theory, “Reamde,’’ set on present day planet Earth, barely traffics in such esoterica. Here, you’ll mostly find a techno-martial thriller, much in the same vein as Tom Clancy, albeit expertly crafted and often gorgeously written.

Richard is the dispassionate, outcast middle-aged brother of the Forthrast family who founded T’Rain, a World of Warcraft-like online fantasy game whose millions of devotees role-play mages and dwarves and build networks of vassals. Richard’s niece Zula, an Eritrean refugee and geoscientist, helps manage the virtual mineral deposits that players must “gold mine’’ to generate wealth. The MacGuffin? Zula’s cash-strapped, dimwit boyfriend bungles the black-market sale of stolen credit card data, which becomes corrupted by a virus called REAMDE, an anagram for “read me’’ - the file nobody reads when installing software. To restore the infected files, victims must deliver virtual ransoms to a “troll’’ (hacker), in the game. Meanwhile, bandits rob and kill these gold-ferrying avatars. Chaos rains down upon T’Rain.

When it’s determined the REAMDE hacker lives in China, the client for the data is none too pleased. That sets into motion Stephenson’s scenario tangling the fates of manifold characters: Russian mobsters, a Chinese tour guide, a British MI6 agent, a Hungarian techie, Islamic jihadists, and two Tolkienesque storytellers, among others. The action intercuts among these players who hop, skip, and jump vehicles, jets, and boats from the Pacific Northwest to China to the Rocky Mountains. Kidnappings trigger escape attempts. Plotlines collide. Bodies pile up.

This frenetic scope is tempered by Stephenson’s lingering pace. He tunes into the precise frequency of each character, how they process and remember stimuli, be they terrorist or innocent.

In one typical passage, Zula ruminates on the trauma of her capture, “shocked by how little effect it had on her, at least in the short term. She developed three hypotheses: 1. The lack of oxygen that had caused her to pass out almost immediately after she’d killed Khalid had interfered with the formation of short-term memories or whatever it was that caused people to develop posttraumatic stress disorder.’’ That’s just hypothesis number one.

Stephenson - a minimalist, he’s not - takes us deep in these warrens of thought, cause, and effect. (He resorts to awkward “exposition as dialogue’’ info dumps, too.) Moments are narrated with painstaking precision. The events of “Day 4’’ - a pitched battle among spies, mafia, extremists, and trolls, told from a kaleidoscope of perspectives - requires 200 pages. Decision tree huggers will revel in these tactics and processes; others will find the obsessive detail tedious.

Call “Reamde’’ baroque, or call it bloated. You decide.

The meat of the novel comes before the real-world gun-blazing begins: sly jabs at the war on terror, consumer culture, our online demeanor and misdemeanors, and insights into the shifts in consciousness that social and technological change have wrought. “[Y]ou kids nowadays substitute communicating for thinking, don’t you?’’, a Scotsman involved in the identity theft scheme complains. Walmart is likened to “a starship that had landed in the soybean fields,’’ and “an interdimensional portal to every other Walmart in the known universe.’’

These adroit touches may be enough to sustain readers caught in the crossfire. That said, Stephenson probably realizes that gunplay will gain the author new fans, while also losing him loyal legions of the old.

Ethan Gilsdorf, author of “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks,’’ can be reached at www.ethangilsdorf.com.

Sucker Punch misses

Sucker Punch

 What happens when you mix Heavy Metal (that episodic, 1981 sex, rock and violence fantasy movie) with teenage boy fantasies of girls in mini-skirts kicking ass with automatic weapons and samurai swords, and a treacle-infused revenge and sacrifice plot about escape from mental institutions?

 You get the chaotic, seething, psycho-nonsense that is Sucker Punch.

 The premise had some promise. In the unnamed 1960s, the doll-faced Babydoll, played by Emily Browning (The Uninvited), accidentally shoots and wounds her evil, molesting step father. No problem; she acts in self-defense. But a stray bullet also offs her little sister. Ooops. Off Babydoll goes to Victorian, thunderstorm-swept Lennox House for the Mentally Insane, hilariously located in Brattleboro, Vermont (where I once lived). Here, dozens of other girls have been incarcerated, and like Babydoll, her compatriots inexplicably have hot-sounding pseudonyms perfectly suited for our Age of Madonna and Days of Lady Gaga. There’s the not-so-sweet Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish of Bright Star), the chummy Rocket (Jena Malone from Into the Wild), and two others with microscopic roles, the non-blonde Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens, who appeared in the High School Musical films) and the near-invisible Amber (Jamie Chung of Sorority Row), They’re all possibly insane or, like Babydoll, just abandoned by wicked step-parents.

 The big, scary Lennox House is full of nut house clichés, from rusty doors, peeling paint and white tile, to the oblivious orderlies, the lecherous cook (who of course is obese), and the doctor (Jon Hamm of “Mad Men”) who administers the lobotomies. A megalomaniac lech heads up the institution (Oscar Isaac from Robin Hood). There’s one understanding psychiatrist, Madam Gorski (Carla Gugino from Watchmen), whose play-therapy shtick equates imagination with freedom. “That world you control,” she says with her Slavic accent. “That play can be as real as any pain.”

 Lovers of games and genre “escapism” already get the point of fantasy: We enter these realms when, sometimes, real life’s crap bears down too hard on us. High expectations also weigh on director Zack Snyder, whose past movies Watchmen and 300 mostly pleased his fanboy and fangirl audiences. (A recent profile in the New York Times Magazine plumbs Snyder’s sudden surplus of geek cred). Clearly, he loves his graphic novels and his Dungeons & Dragons, and for Sucker Punch, he unfurls that well-trodden path of a quest for something—honor, courage, freedom—by an ordinary-person-with-extraordinary-and-hidden-gifts.

 But here, more so than his other outings, Snyder is preaching, even pandering, to the converted, with wild and disappointing results.

 First, you have to swallow this: More than half of the movie takes place in BabyDoll’s mind. Supposedly, to keep her sane in the loony bin, our Snow White begins to have fantasies of being a hooker trapped inside a Moulin Rouge-like whore house run by the creepy pimp (Isaac again; everyone plays at least two roles in the film). Apparently, in the girl’s mind, being a whore is a step-up. But Babydoll inserts another fantasy layer inside the first (I know, but stay with me here): a quest to obtain five items—a map, fire, a knife, a key and a fifth thing TBA. If she succeeds, she can escape the institution and bring her friends with her. This second fantasy she can only access when she revs up her erotic dance routine for the voyeuristic men. (Cleverly, Snyder never lets the audience see her sexy moves.)

When BabyDoll embarks on quest Part One, a solo adventure set in feudal Japan, she meets an unnamed “Wise Man,” the veteran actor Scott Glenn, who’s been wonderful in movies ranging from The Right Stuff, The Hunt for Red October, The Silence of the Lambs and The Bourne Ultimatum. Here, his grizzled, grandfatherly Wise Man character is Master Po/Yoda to Babydoll’s Grasshopper/Luke. “What are you looking for?” he asks, before handing over some serious firepower. “A way out,” replies the stoic Babydoll, who doesn’t break a smile all movie. Emily Browning’s wide, inviting, snow-white face, punctuated by two giant eyes, is an anime artist’s wet dream.

After defeating a trio of troll-like, giant armored samurai, Babydoll invites her ragtag galpals to join her on the next installment of heroic derring-do. Like in the Rupert Holmes song, she wants them to “Come with me and escape.” And they do: first to the zombie-infested trenches of World War I, then into a WW II–medieval castle-siege mash-up scenario, and finally on a bomb-defusing mission on some craggy rock next to what looks like Saturn. Luckily, for the viewer, the babes march off into battle, often in slow-motion, dressed like “slovenly trulls” and “brazen strumpets” from Babydoll’s Prostitutes & Pimps role-playing game. (Check the “Random Harlot Table” from your Dungeon Master’s Guide for details). This set-up permits the young ladies to wear fishnet stocking and high heels as they fight undead German infantrymen and shiny robots from the future. The Wise Man reappears in each fantasy episode as quest-giver, instructing the gals where they’ll find the particular item on their wish list. He also offers advice like “Don’t ever write a check with your mouth that you can’t cash with your ass.”

In shooting his asylum/brothel scenes, Snyder composes his shots with a painstakingly, almost achingly overthought attention. But at least these shots are mostly quiet. Once the fantasy ass-kicking begins, the bloody camera can’t stay still, sweeping, pivoting, dipping, swooping, all the while shooting with jerky, “Hey, aren’t we missing a few frames of film here?” look-and –feel that’s all the vogue these days. Adding to the head-throbs are the blaring remixes of classics like Eurhythmics’s “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” Queen’s  “We Will Rock You” and “I Want It All,” and Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit.” Each fight episode feels like a video game level sponsored by a record label. Advil, anyone?

Meanwhile, the production design and digital landscapes have been steeped—OK, soaked—in a sea of sepia. Some of it is stunning. We see some cool cross-pollination of genres. Those big samurai dudes wield “naginatas” (a pole arm with curved blade on the end, much like a European glaive) but also primitive machine guns. In that siege scene, the ruined castle is swarming with orcs and foot soldiers in plate mail; into this mess the gals air drop from a bomber plane, then kill a sleeping dragon. Back in WW I, there’s zeppelins but also zombies and an anime-inspired, jet pack-powered bipedal armored fighting machine emblazoned with a pink bunny. That’s piloted by Amber, who handles all the flying duties. At one point, when Wise Guy barks at the ladies, “They’re using steampower and clockwork!” I half expected a subtitle to pop up: “Hey Steampunk Fans: We get it!” followed by, in smaller type, “[Hey Newbies: Steampunk is a genre the uses anachronistic technology or futuristic inventions as Victorians like Jules Venre might have envisioned ...]”

That first action scene, where Babydoll faces the giants with glowing red eyes (they glow, therefore they are evil), has its pleasures. But here’s where the major flaw of Sucker Punch is revealed. There’s nothing at stake. We know each mission is a fight of fantasy. The girls are imbued with awesome superpowers—with their blades they deflect bullets from nasty German undead; they leap, slow-mo, over the crude weapon blows dealt by Japanese trolls; they are thrown across temples and train cars and tossed through stone walls; they are pummeled by shiny robots. Nary a scratch on their milky cheeks. The audience figures out these gals are impervious. So where’s the danger? Babydoll has as many lives as a video game avatar. Only towards the end do we see real death, but the moment is laughable.

Sucker Punch aims to work on the level of universal heroic fantasy epic, but it barely functions as pulp. The Sweet 16 set may get off on the “grrrrrl power” theme, and not a few boys will dig the upskirt action shots mixed with oodles of cartoon violence. But the cocktail of comic book clichés is too sour to swallow. Strong female heroines are welcome, but their impact as role models is diluted when we see their exploits are simply fantasies nested within further fantasies, like level 60 Russian Night Elf dolls.

So what are we left with? Men are horrible, predatory pervs? That they “silence” a young woman and her “voice” via real or imaginary lobotomies? That, as the film’s PR material touts, the only resort is her “dream world” which “provides the ultimate escape from her darker reality.” Or that we should thrilled by the ambiguity of it all, because the filmmakers say, “her incredible adventures blur the lines between what’s real and what is imaginary.” Sucker Punch, meet Jacob’s Ladder, A Beautiful Mind, Fight Club, Psycho and about a hundred other movies with imaginary characters or unreliable (or insane) protagonists and narrators.

Yes, a lobotomy would be the ultimate bummer. But so is that “What chains us? Who holds the key?” voice-over doggerel right before the credits roll. “You get out there and live for all of us,” are Babydoll’s final words before her own grim ending begins.

I think even teenage girls will have more fun playing a couple hours of World of Warcraft, Halo or Portal.

 Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the award-winning book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, his travel memoir investigation into fantasy and gaming subcultures that the Huffington Post calls “part personal odyssey, part medieval mid-life crisis, and part wide-ranging survey of all things freaky and geeky." National Public Radio described the book as "Lord of the Rings meets Jack Kerouac’s On the Road" and Wired.com proclaimed, “For anyone who has ever spent time within imaginary realms, the book will speak volumes.” Follow Ethan's adventures at http://www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.

"like swimming with a shark in dark waters": Review of Tornado Alley

TORNADO ALLEY

Directed by: Sean Casey

Starring: Sean Casey, Joshua Wurman, Karen Kosiba, Don Burgess, narrated by Bill Paxton

Running time: 43 minutes

At: Museum of Science

Rated: unrated

from Ethan Gilsdorf's review in The Boston Globe

“Hunting a tornado can feel like swimming with a shark in dark waters,’’ the narrator says. “You know it’s there. You just can’t find it.’’

The voice, of course, is Bill Paxton, from “Twister.’’

“Tornado Alley,’’ the latest IMAX spectacular, which opens tomorrow at the Museum of Science, follows a team of 100 scientists and their fleet of vehicles mounted with Doppler weather radars, collectively called VORTEX 2. Their mission: to understand which supercell thunderstorms make tornadoes and why, and to plumb their “unseen architecture,’’ thus increasing warning times and saving lives. They spend a springtime scanning a seven-state swath of the Midwest known as “tornado alley,’’ home to 80 percent of the world’s most violent tornadoes. One wonders what happened to VORTEX 1.

You get what you might expect: the behind scenes sit-and-wait, then the psychedelic radar images blossoming on screen. The meteorologist geeks drop probes on the roadside and speak in crackling voices over the CB: “Rogue 11, deploy’’ and “Copy that.’’ Then a dark funnel gathers its strength, the soundtrack’s horns blare and kettle drums thunder, and “55-gallon oil barrels fly like leaves in the wind,’’ Paxton says, injecting the proceedings with requisite drama.

Meanwhile, Sean Casey (of The Discovery Channel’s “Storm Chasers’’) offers the thrill-seeker angle. He races around in his 14,000-pound armored Tornado Intercept Vehicle, or TIV, which looks like a prop from a low-budget postapocalyptic action movie. The TIV is equipped with a roof-mounted turret letting Casey shoot with his 70mm film camera in a 360-degree panorama. “It’s coming right at us!’’ he barks, and the turret swivels like he’s battling TIE fighters swarming the Death Star. Everyone in this documentary wants to be Han Solo.

“Tornado Alley’’ is awe-inspiring, doom-slinging fun, fluffy as the 10-mile-high clouds towering on the screen. More real might have been any grumbling between adrenaline junkie Casey, who seeks point-blank footage from the heart of a twister, and the more cautious researchers, who are actually doing science. In 43 minutes, only so many subplots can unfold.

Given tsunamis and other disasters swamping the planet, there’s some perversity to be had here, too. Weather geeks and motor heads alike might enjoy “Tornado Alley’’ and take pleasure in the chase. But when the clouds part and the destruction is revealed, can we feel good in the morning?

Ethan Gilsdorf, author of “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks,’‘ can be reached at www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.

You must see Marwencol

[For more information on Marwencol, seehttp://www.marwencol.com/ ]

Like all accomplished war photographers, Mark Hogancamp puts himself at risk.

He shoots fugitive moments of violence, anguish, and bravery. But Hogancamp’s work differs from others’ in one key respect: The combat zones he enters don’t entirely exist in the real world. It’s the battlefield of his emotions that he’s trying to capture on film.

Marwencol is a remarkable documentary about this peculiar man and the fictitious, painstakingly-detailed, 1/6-scale town he built in his yard. Set in Belgium during World War II and populated with dozens of buildings, military vehicles, and more than 100 foot-high, poseable action figures, Hogancamp’s simulacrum is called Marwencol.

“Everything’s real,’’ Hogancamp gushes at one point in the film, demonstrating how a tiny pistol in one soldier’s hands has a working hammer and replaceable clip. “That all adds to my ferocity of getting into the story. I know what’s inside every satchel,’’ he says.

Those contents include a stamp-size deed proving that Captain “Hogie’’ Hogancamp, the real man’s 12-inch alter ego, owns the doll-house-size, make-believe bar in this make-believe realm.

The fine line separating real from imagined is the focus of this poignant and provocative documentary, winner of the Jury Award for best documentary at the SXSW Film Festival. [Marwencol opens at selected theaters in more than 40 cities nationwide, starting in November and continuing into December and January. More info on theater dates here:http://www.marwencol.com/theaters/]

Read the rest of the post here

more reviews and coverage

The Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks juggernaut keeps rolling across the landscape, picking up some reviews and coverage along the way. Three recent items you might want to check out:

1) My blog on the Powell's site, "Geek is no longer a four-letter word"

2) the sneak-preview of the Booklist review:

Booklist, September 15, 2009

After an aneurysm drastically changed his mother’s personality when he was in his teens, Gilsdorf found refuge in the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. Eventually he left the RPG (role-playing games) world behind, and became a successful writer. Then at age 41, he rediscovers his old gaming paraphernalia and decides to take a trip deep into the world of fantasy, hoping to get to the heart of its allure. Gilsdorf’s quest takes him to gaming conventions, medieval reenactments, fantasy-inspired concerts, and even to Middle Earth itself—the New Zealand setting that served as the backdrop for Peter Jackson’s enormously popular Lord of the Rings films. Along the way, he meets a wide variety of people of all ages and social backgrounds who, like him, in some form or another seek an escape from the mundane reality of the modern world. Gilsdorf is an engaging and personable guide. Like many who will pick up his book, he’s got one foot squarely in the real world, the other in the fantasy one. This is a journey well worth taking. — Kristine Huntley

3) Boston Magazine mentions Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks to its "Consumer Index: September": "Nerd Association"

Enjoy!

first amazon.com review -- 4 stars

The Amazon.com masses (well, one single mass) seem to like Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks... so far, so good. Feel free to add to the discussion! Here's what this reader had to say:

4.0 out of 5 stars

Close to home, August 21, 2009

By Wolvercote (Rhode Island) -See all my reviews

Being a "closet gamer/fantasy geek" myself I completely related to Ethan's book. His story is my own and I'm sure a large number of other guys out there. Trying to balance the desire to immerse yourself in fantasy, (be it Tolkien, D&D, or online gaming) and living in "reality" with its expectations of what is considered "normal" is a recurring theme in the book and in my own life.

I felt the angst that Ethan dealt with as he slipped back into gaming and fantasy after years of self-denial. Anyone who has felt that twinge of embarassment over being a gamer or fantasy fan will enjoy Ethan's journey and obeservations.

I certainly did.