Entertainment | Page 13 of 89

Everest, illustrated book/large graphic novel excellence

Educational illustrated books get a bad rap. When readers get to a certain age they feel that books with too many pictures are babyish. The exceptions to those books are graphic novels, which are more mature in their eyes. Everest, The Remarkable Story of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Nogay is an illustrated book in name only. In reality, the content, intelligence, details, information and length put this more in league with a graphic novel, albeit one that’s bigger in size than a standard comic book.

Everest is a blend of illustrated book and graphic novel that will captivate you

FLCL: Progressive and Alternative, finally available on Blu-Ray

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a copy of the Blu-Ray that I reviewed in this blog post. The opinions are my own. Any intellectual property that spans more than a decade in-between releases we find interesting. FLCL: Progressive and FLCL: Alternative are the sequels to FLCL, an anime series that came out in 2001. In its run on Adult Swim Toonami FLCL was #1 in its timeslot and earned a huge cult following. FLCL (pronounced Fooly Cooly), both Progressive and Alternative are finally available on Blu-Ray DVD in a combo pack with tons of special features.

FLCL: Progressive and Alternative is finally available on Blu-Ray Combo pack

Playing With Fire family fun kit giveaway

Playing With Fire is available on Blu-Ray and DVD now. It features a ton of extras that will have elementary aged kids through middle school howling with laughter. When Playing With Fire was in theaters it was THE film that the kids at our elementary school wanted to see. It’s rated PG and offers the perfect combination of humor and action that will entertain kids and be just enough to keep parents loving it too.

Just yesterday we passed a DVD rental box and our 8 year-old had a meltdown that we weren’t going rent Playing With Fire that evening. We reminded him about the power of being patient, to which he responded that all of his friends want to see the film too.

Win this Playing With Fire prize pack

The Only Woman In The Photo is the most famous woman you don’t know

The Only Woman In The Photo is a book title that really baits the hook. Why was she the only woman in the photo? In this #MeToo era it conjures up all manner of scheming or wily characters that are lurking in or out of the picture frame. In reality, The Only Woman In The Photo has a much larger and impactful scope. This is the story of Frances Perkins, a woman whose work we come across daily due to the time she spent working in the White House.

Frances Perkins isn’t a household name, but millions are impacted by her work everyday

Downton Abbey The Motion Picture, the Crawley clan film works well

Now a major motion picture, that phrase used to be the marketing stuff of legend. The book that you read is now a movie! You and your friends can be the first to say that the book was better and then clamor for more books that can be made into sequels. When some of the toys, I’m looking at you Transformers, started to get into the game it did water down the reputation a bit. When video games were made into movies it was a tipping point in the universe where up was down. Thankfully that also signaled a bit of a change. It said, without actually saying it, that if the fans are there, then a movie could be made of a property that was once on the small screen. That’s where Downton Abbey, The Motion Picture succeeds as a fan’s film and one that’s enjoyable for people who enjoy cinema.

Downton Abbey jumps from the small screen to the big screen with ease

Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker, the (Palpatine) Emperor has no clothes

When The Last Jedi came out I was reluctant to criticize it because the one before it was so entertaining. It had some built-in good will that made it relatively critic proof initially. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker doesn’t arrive in movie theaters with that luxury. That’s unfortunate because the movie tries very hard to succeed. It jams so much content, loose plot stories and guest stars from previous films that the final third of the film feels like a talk show saying goodbye as previous guests walk on screen.

I want to love you, but your script doesn’t make that a logical decision

Star Wars, The Ultimate Pop-Up Galaxy has to seen to be believed

Ode to be trapped inside Matthew Reinhart’s mind. Reinhart is an author and pop-up book genius. He’s constructed dozens of pop-up books that make you want to be a piece of paper just so he can engineer it becoming whatever magical thing might come to life in his books. We first discovered his work in Encyclopedia Prehistorica Dinosaurs and Encyclopedia Sharks and Other Sea Monsters. These, and his other pop-up books are the stuff of legend and will engross anyone aged 5 and up. They’re also very complex, so if you value your books you’ll want to handle them yourself when looking at them with children under 10. Star Wars, The Ultimate Pop-Up Galaxy lives up to its name and is now our favorite Reinhart book. It maintains the intricate pop-up aspects of his other work, but digs down into many Star Wars elements that pop off of the page.

This is a pop-up book that will dazzle fans, stimulate curiosity and boggle the mind

Bose Frames are the perfect entertainment and communication device

We love technology, its advances and music. Having said that, we personally recognize when music should be at arm’s length, for example, we’re not a fan of having music in the shower. For us a hard surface, slippery bubbles and music doesn’t seem like a natural fit. When we first tried the Bose Frames, the first audio sunglasses with built-in Bose speakers we were lukewarm. Then we tried them with music that we normally listen to and are 100% a convert. They check off all of the marks (almost) so perfectly that you wish they came in a prescription option so that you could wear them all the time.

The Bose Frames Alto make you want to dance like Tom Cruise in Losin’ It