runk's junk : geeky goodness

This marks the 10th straight year for attending the Feast of Fantasy at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. This year’s menu was as follows:

• Appetizer: Panko Breaded Ravioli
• Soup: Corn & Green Chili Bisque
• Salad: Capressi Salad
• First Entrée: Steak au Poive with McCaire Potatoes and Brazier Zucchini
• Sorbet: Strawberry
• Second Entrée: Sliced Chicken Breast with L’orange Sauce served with Wild Rice, Cranberries and Caramelized Onions
• Dessert: Chocolate Cheesecake Phillo Shell with Strawberries and Cream

The soup was wonderful and I really enjoyed the salad this year. It was a nice change from the field green salad that is normally served. The steak was wonderfully prepared and the chicken had a nice spicy kick that was offset by the orange sauce.

Review: First off, let me just say, I really liked The Mummy. While not high art, it was what it tried to be; a fun, summer popcorn movie. I enjoined Brendan Fraser’s performance and fell in love with Rachel Weisz as Evy.

I thought The Mummy Returns underperformed. It tried too hard to out do its predecessor; it was filled with silly and quite often bad special effects. But overall, I enjoyed it.

So I was looking forward to seeing the latest installment in the series. Let me just say, this is a bad, bad movie. I don’t know what was worse the script of the acting. Both were a complete mess.

I could spend forever nitpicking this movie apart, but aside from the terrible script, most of the movie’s issues can be distilled down to a single item: casting. This movie was horrible miscast.

Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh’s talents were wasted in this movie.

The idea of replacing Rachel Weisz with Maria Bello was a huge mistake; better to not even have the character of Evy in the movie.

But the single biggest flaw with this movie was Luke Ford playing the now grown up Alex O’Connell. I have seldom seen such stiff, emotionless acting.

I am a collector at heart and often feel compelled to complete the many collections I have started, but this is one series I will not be completing on DVD.

The second book in the Paths of Darkness series.

From the publisher: Even the brutal streets of a treacherous city can’t hide a tortured soul forever.

The barbarian Wulfgar sets upon a dangerous path toward redemption when an old friend finds him in the city of Luskan. Wulfgar’s journey twists up the windswept peaks of the Spine of the World. He will persevere, for at the end lies his most prized possession—the life he thought he’d lost forever.

The first book in the Paths of Darkness series.

From the publisher: Wulfgar returns from the Abyss to find there are demons a hammer cannot crush.

Entreri has used his dagger to carve an empire in the back streets of Calimport, as he seeks the head of his oldest foe.

Drizzt learns that not all wounds bleed. And not all blades kill.

The last book in the Legacy of the Drow series.

From the publisher: Drizzt and Catti-brie have been away from Mithral Hall for six long years, but the pain of a lost companion still weighs heavily on their strong shoulders. Chasing pirates aboard Captain Deudermont’s Sea Sprite is enough to draw their attention away from their grief. Then a mysterious castaway on an uncharted island sends them back to the very source of their pain, and into the clutches of a demon with vengeance on his mind.

The third book in the Legacy of the Drow series.

From the publisher: Rising up from the black depths of the Underdark, the drow once more meet the dwarves of Mithral Hall. Bruenor Battlehammer, with Drizzt at his side, won’t go down without a fight—but they’ll have to fight without Wulfgar or Catti-brie at their sides.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull comes to DVD and Blu-Ray October 14.

Update: I don’t if the official release date has changed, but Amazon has informed me that it won’t ship until October 21st.

The second book in the Legacy of the Drow series.

From the publisher: Still reeling from the death of Wulfgar, Drizzt is allowed little time to grieve, for dark elves are massing in the caverns deep under Mithral Hall. To protect his adopted home, he’ll have to return to the city of his birth, the evil City of Spiders. Menzoberranzan is one of the most dangerous places in the already perilous Underdark on a good day, but for Drizzt, a renegade with a price on his head, its certain death ever to set foot there again. But Drizzt Do’Urden and his companions have faced certain death before, and will gladly spend their lives for the sake of the dwarves of Mithral Hall.

The first book in the Legacy of the Drow series.

From the publisher: Having found a measure of peace among the dwarves in the reclaimed Mithral Hall, Drizzt begins to know contentment for perhaps the first time in his tumultuous life. But for a dark elf renegade from a city ruled by priestesses of a demon goddess, no peace can long last. It is Lolth herself, the dreaded Queen of the Demonweb Pits, who musters her followers to pour up from the black depths of the Underdark to reclaim for their goddess the one soul that had managed to elude her. The soul of Drizzt Do’Urden.