Things to stay away from, book news

Hello,

As promised I am back, still not a whole lot going on in the entertainment world. There are two things I want to warn you away from. The first is "The Good German" starring George Clooney and Tobey Maguire. Clooney is one of my favorite actors and I usually quite like the movies he makes. However I could only watch about 20 minutes of this movie before I gave up on it out of boredom. Also how does Tobey Maguire still have a career? He has to be one of the wussiest and least talented actors currently. I wish someone would explain to me why the three "Spiderman" movies were so popular. I watched all three and was hugely disappointed in them. Now Christian Bale, there is someone who can play a superhero convincingly.

Another thing to stay far from is "The Gemini Division", it is a TV series on NBC. There are four epiodes of it on Comcast On Demand. I was hoping I would find a good show and then I would have a few episodes to watch. That's what happened with "Mad Men" but not with this show.

Also a couple of quick reviews of movies I have seen on Comcast On Demand. The first is the Robert Duvall and Eva Mendes movie "We Own The Night". It is an okay movie, but not as good as I thought it would be. However Eva Mendes is looking spectacular in it. Also I watched "The Hard Way" starring James Woods and Michael J. Fox. The premise is a very funny. It is about a grizzled cop showing a Hollywood big shot around for a couple of weeks so the big shot can understand the life of a cop. Of course as the cop explains this isn't something you can get a feel for in two weeks. I don't think I need to tell you who plays which role. It is a very similar story to "Tropic Thunder".

Taylor Swift has her new song out, it's coming from her new CD "Fearless". The name of the song is "Love Story", it is currently the #3 song on the iTunes Top 100. This is a very good song. If the album is as good as this song, she is going to have another smash on her hands. Her next CD will be released on 11/11. The promotional pictures for this CD are making her look a lot older than she is. She is a very attractive young lady. By the way if you have not bought her first CD yet, I would urge you to go buy it. It is one of the best CD's released in the last few years.

Other music info: I went to Rhapsody to listen to the new Metallica CD on Wednesday. However I couldn't listen to the full album, you can only listen to 30 seconds snippets of each song. That is not a very good sample when many of the songs are 6 minutes plus. I am going to see if I can listen to the whole CD on lala.com sometime soon.

Oprah will officially announce her new bookclub selection today. The title of the book is already public knowledge. You can even see it on Oprah's official website. It is "The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle" by first time author David Wroblewski. I hope it is as good as she is hyping it. I have read a lot of good reviews of this book. However the reviews seemed to be mixed on amazon.com. Right now on amazon.com it ranks 61,973 overall. Usually what happens when a book is announced as an Oprah bookclub selection it leaps into the Top Ten. I am surprised it hasn't started moving up the amazon.com bookseller list yet, I predict by tonight it will be #1. Also be prepared this is a 576 page mammoth of a book. Long books are my favorite. If they are really good you can stay in them for a long time. Typically they aren't something you can knock out in one sitting either. (Other than "Happy Potter" or "Twilight" fans of course.

Also while reviewing information on amazon.com I saw that Dennis Lehane has a new book coming out on September 23rd. The name of the book is "The Given Day". Lehane is one of my favorite authors, he has written many good books. However his best book is "Mystic River". If you have not read this book, you need to read it as soon as possible. It is a great, great book. One of the those books that is very hard to put down.

I started reading the Guns n' Roses biography Wednesday night. It is called "Watch You Bleed", written by rock author Stephen Davis. So far I am not very impressed with it. It's not as well written as "Hammer of the Gods" or his Doors book. Another book I want to read is "Boys Will Be Boys" by Jeff Pearlman. You can read an excerpt of it on espn.go.com. This book is about the Dallas Cowboys teams of the mid-90's. Some of the best football teams of all-time and also some of the most colorful. To back that up espn.go.com just named the Cowboys the #1 team of all-time.

Well that's about it. Ironically I have "Edgar Sawtelle" on hold at the library. So when I get it I will read the first little bit and let you know if it lives up to the hype. You can actually read the first chapter at Oprah.com. I am not sure the next time I will be back. Have a good weekend, themusicandbookaddict