NEW MOVIES ON THE WAY

I recently saw the movie JOHN CARTER and thought it was great. I still think it was a great movie, regardless of what the critics and box office receipts say. The fact that the book it was based on was written 100 years ago makes it even more interesting of a movie. I'm not  a big sci-fi guy.  I did enjoy the MATRIX franchise and look forward to some more movies in that line.

I remember when, one day back in 1984 being drug by old friend Billy Ray, more or less against my will, to see the movie DUNE. We had been hanging out in Galveston for the day and unfortunately for me, when we drove past the long gone Galvez Mall, which had some movie theaters, Billy Ray saw that this movie was showing.

As I recall, there wasn't much fishing action, and by mid-day we had eaten well but found ourselves with nothing to do. So it was drive home or see the movie. The big selling point for me was that Sting was in the movie. I figured it couldn't be that bad. Sting was at the top of his musical game and I was hopeful he wouldn't be involved with a crap movie. I know this movie and book has legions of fans but I'm not one of them, as I found out during the very long showing of this movie.

But there are a few sci-fi sequels that I've been looking forward to.

Speaking of the Matrix, there have been strong rumors since January of 2011 that a Matrix 4 and 5 will one day soon appear. There's a ton of news releases from back then from no less than Keanu Reeves talking about the new movies.

Meanwhile, a more certain sequel is RIDDICK III, slated per the internets at being released in August of this year. I enjoyed both RIDDICK movies and if any of what I've read on the internets is true about the plotlines, it should be a decent movie.

There's also going to be a new installment in the BOURNE franchise, called THE BOURNE LEGACY. It does not have Matt Damon in it (I suppose he is too busy doing his political things) but does have an apparent able bodied replacement with the theme "We didn't just make one of them", which is something you already know if you've watched the previous Bourne flicks. In any event, I looked at the IMDB page for this movie and it does have some of the evil CIA support cast from the other flicks, so there will be some continuity. Not unlike the Bond flicks when Bond or M changed, the concept should be enough to make a decent movie.

Along with JOHN CARTER, I also recently saw KILLER ELITE. Great flick, and based on a novel by a former SAS man, so there's lots of good detail in the book and the movie.

Yeah, I bought the decades old book, now retitled Killer Elite and enjoyed it. I also bought a collection of John Carter stories that I'm about to start reading. You know the books are always better than the screenplays. If you look at a movie as basically being 50 or 60 two to three minutes scenes strung together, there's only so much detail you can put in those small sections.

I'm also about to read Abraham Lincoln the Vampire Killer. Should be an interesting read.

I used to read a lot of serious titles. Then I went to law school. Law school and the ensueing years of law practice (and reading, as a trial lawyer, mountains of documents and tons of case law) largely ruint me for pleasure reading. Also, dealing with hardcore crime and criminality renders me uninterested in reading or watching anything in the genres that revolve around what I do for a living.

My wife likes all of these rogue private detective novels as well as hardcore crime books by the likes of Elmore Leonard. Yet she usually doesn't care to hear the details of any of my more sensational cases. I guess it's easier to take if you think it could be fiction.

In my twenties and thirties, I read lots of books about current political events around the globe, various intelligence agencies and their operatives and operations and other related topics.

That bores me now. The stories change but the people in real life just don't learn from past mistakes. I'd much rather read regular history books, going back hundreds and thousands of years, than read about the current meanderings of the fools that are running this planet.

One current events author that I've enjoyed since my teens is none other than P.J. O'Rourke. The wife and I, back in dating days, were happily surprised to find we both had this hilarious author on our reading lists. We got to get some books signed by him at a book store appearance several years ago and it was nice seeing him.

I started reading him when he wrote and for a short time, edited the classic National Lampoon Magazine in the 1970's. My high school journalism teacher thought that the magazine was crap, and she didn't much care for the National Lampoon Radio Hour recordings I would bring to class to listen to in the darkroom when I was developing and printing 35mm pictures for the yearbook and newspaper.

He went on to write for auto magazines and to a great career as an author, writing smartass commentary books that really hit home with me and most of my friends. If I've got a favorite living author, it's P.J.

So what's been added to your bookshelf lately?