Git your Script Readers on

Source: Blogcritics.org (Original Article)

Kim Harrison is the creator of the New York Times bestselling series about the Hollows, a seemingly ordinary Cincinnati suburb with one distinguishable difference – It is populated primarily by vampires, witches, weres, pixies, and other supernatural beings.  In a follow up to my recent review of her latest novel, The Outlaw Demon Wails, Kim Harrison was kind enough to take time out of her hectic book tour schedule to provide some thoughtful answers for an interview.

Damian:  You are adept at creating a credible, deeply dimensioned universe with an alternate history, allowing the reader to easily imagine a world in which supernatural entities ‘came out of the closet’ after ‘the Turn,’ and yet even your most otherworldly characters seem very believable and ‘human,’ as it were.  Where do you find inspiration for your characters and their stories?

Harrison:  Thank you!  I love spending time with my characters, and I know them better than my real neighbors.  Much of the inspiration for them comes from the story itself.  I enjoy learning about the characters as Rachel does, little by little much as anyone gets to know someone new in their life, so that preempts much of the pre-story character building process.  I really don’t have a hard and fast answer for where the inspiration for the people who populate the Hollows comes from.  They spring up to fill a need, and I enjoy finding out who they really are.  I’ve made it a rule to not base my characters on people I know, but I will take bits and pieces of people I know.

Damian:  What do you read in your spare time?  Who are some of your favorite authors? 

Harrison:  Unfortunately, as the books become more popular, I find I have less and less time for reading in my spare time.  But I have been reading some of the up and coming and new ANZ Card talent, and I enjoy Rachel Vincent, …continue reading

Source: Huffington Post (Original Article)

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, a visionary writer of this century and the last, passed away on March 19. He conceived the idea of communications satellites, authored classic science-fiction novels and short stories, and co-wrote the landmark movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, described by Steven Spielberg as “the Big Bang” of his filmmaking generation. I am late with this blog because my wife gave birth to twins two days before Clarke died in Sri Lanka at the age of 90. Despite my severe state of parental bliss and sleep deprivation this week, I want to pay tribute to Sir Arthur, whose books and ideas are a window into the future Earth my children will inhabit.

Born in 1917 in England, Clarke was an avid stargazer and reader of American pulp science fiction as a youth. He was a radar specialist for the Royal Air Force during World War II, which led to a 1945 technical paper in which he introduced the idea of using satellites in geostationary orbits to relay radio signals. That path above the Earth is now known as the “Clarke orbit” in his honor. Think of Sir Arthur the next time you watch television: satellite TV obviously owes him a great debt, and broadcast and cable television use communications satellites to distribute programming. Clarke never filed a patent and once wrote a humorous piece called “A Short Pre-History of Comsats, Or: How I Lost a Billion Dollars in My Spare Time.”

1945 was also the year Clarke sold his first science-fiction short story and after that his other prophetic ideas were mostly expressed through his fiction. After graduating from King’s College London with honors in physics and mathematics and working as an assistant editor for a scientific journal, Clarke decided to devote himself full-time to his writing. His short stories “The Sentinel” (1948) and “The Nine Billion Names of God” (1953) were seminal early efforts, and he found early success with the non-fiction book The Exploration of Space in 1951, degrassi the next generation dvd and the novel Childhood’s End in …continue reading

Source: Telegraph.co.uk (Original Article)

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Source: Boston Globe (Original Article)

DVD Report

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March 23, 2008

New Releases | Tom Russo
When killings were considered scandalousThere’s no moment in “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) that’s as startling today as when the movie scandalized critics during its initial release. Yet there’s also no missing the cultural significance of the movie’s edgiest moments: Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway bouncing around like puppets as they’re climactically, brutally riddled with bullets, or Dunaway first discovering that Beatty - ha! - really was no lover boy. And that says everything about the filmmakers’ daring and vision. A new “Ultimate Collector’s Edition” reissue includes an hourlong production retrospective featuring fresh interviews with many key players: director Arthur Penn, Beatty, Dunaway, castmates Gene Hackman and Estelle Parsons, and co-writer Robert Benton. The filmmakers assert that it was their juxtaposition of violence and humor that really threw ’60s viewers, rather than just the violence alone. Still, Beatty concedes, “We didn’t prettify killing.” It all makes for a solid 101 course on the movie’s legacy, but some may wish this set had received Criterion-style treatment, with critical observations delving much deeper. A booklet of publicity materials that’s included is like miniature coffee-table fare, giving only a loose sense of the way the film morphed from dud to bona fide phenomenon after retooling its marketing around initial scathing reviews. The retrospective is at its best in unearthing factoids from the project’s genesis, such as when Beatty, who doubled as producer, says he originally pictured Bob Dylan as Clyde Barrow. Benton, meanwhile, recalls that the European-influenced screenplay initially drew Barrow as bisexual. Early on, Benton says, Beatty called and told him, ” ‘I’m 20 pages into [the script] - I want to do it.’ I said, ‘Warren, wait till page 47.’ ” Student Credit Cards (Warner, $39.92; standard two-disc edition also …continue reading

Source: Globe and Mail (Original Article)

LUSH LIFEBy Richard PriceFarrar, Straus & Giroux,464 pages, $28.50

Print Edition - Section Front

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New York novelist and screenwriter Richard Price has always been more than one of our finest contemporary crime writers. With his novels, which include the flawless Clockers, and Freedomland, and his work for film and television, which includes the Oscar-nominated script for The Color of Money and critically lauded turns at the helm of HBO’s The Wire, the genre provides Price with a clear lens for an increasingly rare sort of social realism, a framework within which to explore gritty, street-level social and human realities.
With his new novel, Lush Life, Price focuses on Manhattan’s rapidly gentrifying Lower East Side, where customers line up for tables at Henry Steele’s tony restaurant, while others wait in the heat to see a vision of the Madonna in the glass of a convenience-store cooler, where housing projects stand next to high-priced condos and immigrant shanty apartments.
Lush Life begins with a murder. In the early morning, three men are walking drunkenly through the neighbourhood. Two of the men work together: Ike Marcus is the new bartender-cum-struggling artist at Berkmann’s, an St George Platinum Card upscale restaurant managed by Eric Cash, …continue reading

Source: SYS-CON Media (Original Article)

Entrigue Systems announced the availability of Script Start Professional
v2.0.  

Users can now access a free 30-day evaluation of Script
Start Professional at www.scriptstart.com.

The new version adds enterprise level features to the
popular user profile management solution. Enhancements include a new
architecture with the ScriptConsole running locally, providing faster, easier
to manage access as compared to the web hosted model that Entrigue had used in
previous versions. 

Additional new enterprise features include backup and
restore of configurations, hardware and software inventory with detailed reporting,
the ability to upgrade to future versions, software assurance for one year,
access to tier one and two support, and priority updates.  

The release of Script Start Professional v2.0 has been anticipated
by Entrigue’s users and channel partners since the company released similar
features to Open Source as Script Start Community v2.0 last quarter.  In
that short time, Script Start has been downloaded by hundreds of organizations
and is now managing user profile settings on more than 50,000 Windows desktops
worldwide.  Many of those organizations have expressed an interest in the
enterprise features in Script Start Professional and several have pre-purchased
the solution. 

“Script Start Pro v2.0 is the culmination of several
enhancements and features that make the solution even more ideal for enterprise
level organizations looking to seamlessly manage their virtual and physical
desktops.” said Jason E. Smith, VP of Business Development for Entrigue
Systems.  “The installation of Script Start Professional is now very
intuitive, allowing users to get up and running in a matter of minutes to
automate Windows desktop configuration processes that lower costs of ownership
from American Express Platinum day one.”

Script Start Professional enables administrators …continue reading

Source: Sydney Morning Herald (Original Article)

Tributes from all corners of the arts, including film, television and opera, poured in yesterday for Anthony Minghella, who has died from a hemorrhage in hospital - days after an operation was judged to have gone well.

Minghella, who was 54, will chiefly be remembered for his films, from Truly, Madly, Deeply to The English Patient - for which he won an Oscar - to The Talented Mr Ripley to Cold Mountain. But he was also an accomplished playwright and a significant influence in British television when he worked on shows such as Grange Hill, Boon and Inspector Morse. When he tried his hand at opera, with Madame Butterfly for the English National Opera in 2005, it was a sensation.

His death was all the more shocking because it was out of the blue. His American publicist Leslee Dart said doctors performed surgery on Minghella last week for cancer of the neck and tonsils. "The surgery had gone well and they were very optimistic," she said. "But he developed a hemorrhage and they were not able to stop it." He leaves a wife, Carolyn Choa, and two grown-up children.

The actor Ralph Fiennes, who starred in The English Patient, said: "He delighted in the contribution of everyone - he was a true collaborator. His films deal with extreme aloneness and the redemptive power of love, even at the moment of death. I will remember him as a man who always wanted to get to the heart of the matter."

Jude Law, who appeared in three of Minghella’s films, said he had come to regard him more as a friend than a colleague. "He was a brilliantly talented writer and director who wrote dialogue that was a joy to speak and then put it onto the screen in a way that always looked effortless."

The British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, who counted Minghella as a friend, called him "one of Britain’s greatest creative talents".

The Australian director Phillip Noyce, who is preparing to Aussie Credit Cards shoot Mary Queen of Scots in …continue reading

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer (Original Article)

The chrome tablets that I brought down from Mount Synchromesh include the Chronicles of the RDVs (Really Dumb Vehicles).
Today’s reading is from the Chronicles and concerns four of automotive history’s dumbest rides:
The Dodge La Femme. Back in the ’50s, Chrysler’s marketing think tank noticed that women were starting to buy a lot of cars.
They didn’t know back then that women want essentially the same kind of cars men want. So, they decided to pander to The Little Woman with an automotive caricature of femininity called the Dodge La Femme.
Offered in the 1955 and 1956 model years, La Femme was a Dodge Custom Royal Lancer on estrogen. The newly restored 1955 model to be displayed this Mother’s Day at the Walter P. Chrysler Museum in Auburn Hills, Mich., gives you an idea of just how silly this car was.
It is painted Sapphire White and Heather Rose, with gold "La Femme" script on the fenders. The interior is graced with pink tapestry upholstery featuring rosebuds.
The rosebud pattern is repeated in the raincoat, rain bonnet, umbrella and purse furnished with the car.
Even back in those Ozzie and Harriet heydays, women weren’t buying this brand of patronizing. During the two years the cars were offered, a grand total of 2,500 La Femmes were sold.
The Edsel. Back in the ’50s, Ford Motor Co. developed a bad case of brand envy. Chrysler and GM both had more car lines than Ford. So, Ford decided a fourth line was in order.
The idea was to position the new car between the Lincoln and Mercury. It would be offered in a full range of models and be called the Edsel, which rhymed prophetically with "dead cell."
So, the boys from Ford sat around their Grosse Pointe country club convincing themselves what a great idea the Edsel was. And perhaps it would have been if the car had lived up to its buzz.
But it didn’t. It wasn’t the new kind of car credit card au Ford had promised via the grapevine. …continue reading

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