Aug 06, Picks O the Month

Music Picks
When I Look in Your Eyes, Diana Krall

This was a good introduction for us into Jazz. Our favorite track on this CD is right below. We appreciated the romantic-slow-dance quality to it. Other tracks we especially liked on this CD were "Let's Face the Music and Dance," another slow song, and "The Best Thing for You," a light, humorous, quick-paced song.


Diana Krall (samples)
"When I Look in Your Eyes" Track 1
"Let's Face the Music and Dance" Track 2
"The Best Thing for You" Track 3

Book Picks
Brian's Pick
Eldest by Christopher Poalini

The reading level of this book is comparable to the Harry Potter books or The Chronicles of Narnia. The pacing of these series of books is actually quite nice. A movie is being made on the first book of this series that will be released in December 15, 2006. Although the book should have all the material for the making of a good movie, I am leery of the budget put into the movie and worries that it might be cheesy like most fantasy movies Pre-LOTR.

Karri's Pick
Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

We have not seen the movie but this book was wonderful. This book was a Newbery Honor Medal winner in 1998. Spoiler - Although this has some Cinderella references, the depth of the main character in the story far surpasses the original fairy tale. One of the reasons Karri really liked Ella's character is that she is not a damsel in distress like most women in fairy tales are portrayed. Sure she has help along the way but she is not utterly hopeless like Snow White or Sleeping Beauty. Maybe we will check out the movie now to see if it did the book justice.

TV/Movie Picks
Brian's Pick
Justice League - Animated Series Season 2

This was one of the few of the cartoons if not the first to be made specifically for widescreen. The content of this show is great and it is sad to see it relegated to just a cartoon by some people. "A Better World" is a great example of the topic, "does absolute power corrupt?" This episode also happens to be Logan's favorite just because there are 2 Supermans, 2 Batmans, etc. The Justice league hadn't seen much airtime when it was on TV because it was shown on Cartoon Network on a random schedule a not on WB every weekday like the Batman and Superman series were. Also any reruns they ran almost seemed to be exclusively 1st season; which is too bad because although there were decent plots the 1st season could of used more character development. Thank goodness for TV series to DVD transfers.


Justice League Theme Song

Karri's Pick
Naruto

Ninjas with mystical abilities doing Wu Xia like stuff, jumping from trees and channeling chi or chakra to blow stuff up. What’s not to love? Of course there is drama too via love triangles and character flashbacks which make this a very enjoyable show. The only gripe Karri has is that sometimes they do too many recaps of previous episodes as filler material and she wishes they would just get on with the story. Of course, there is also the fact that it is an ongoing series so they always like to leave each episode in a cliffhanger, which is also annoying. -Brian