What do you give the Dad who has everything (including 30,000 books!)? Obviously, a new computer chair! Patrick and Katie assembled the Realspace PRO™ Quantum Mesh Mid-Back Task Chair in minutes and gave it to me for Father’s Day. The Realspace PRO chair is wonderful! Very comfortable. Great lumbar support. The mesh design keeps you cool. This chair sells for $299 at Office Depot, but they caught a sale so it only cost $249. Well worth it! If you’re looking for a new computer chair, give the Realspace PRO a sit. GRADE: A

It’s been a decade since TOY STORY 2 delighted us. Now, Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), Cowgirl Jessie (Joan Cusack) are back with new adventures and new toys, notably Ken (Michael Keaton). Andy, the boy who played with the toys, is now going to college. The toys find themselves donated to Sunnyside, a day care center. But, not everything is as it should be at Sunnyside. In this summer of cinematic drivel and clunky recycled remakes, Toy Story 3 stands out as being as good as the classic first movie in the series. That’s really saying something. GRADE: A+

PBS Masterpiece Theater Mysteries is broadcasting another Miss Marple mystery tonight. Check your local listings for times in your area. Purists will be upset that Masterpiece Theater Mysteries is “converting” non-series Christie mysteries into Miss Marple mysteries. The Secret of the Chimneys was published in 1925. Miss Marple didn’t show up until 1927 in “The Tuesday Night Club” and didn’t appear in her own novel until The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930.

And, have a Happy Father’s Day!

If you’re looking for some entertaining sword & sorcery action, Simon R. Green’s Hawk and Fisher series merits a look. Green wrote these six fantasy novels back in the early 1990s and ACE BOOKS published them. The audience for these books would be Young Adults, but I enjoyed them anyway. Hawk and Fisher are a husband and wife team on the City Guard, an order which polices Green’s fantasy world. They operate in the port city of Haven, a corrupt city-state. Each of Hawk and Fisher’s adventures deals with magic and mystery. There’s no complex plotting or characterizations here, just light entertainment. Penguin has collected all the Hawk and Fisher novels in two omnibus collections. Buy them before they go out-of-print! GRADE: B (for all the novels)
This completes the June part of Carl V.’s fantasy challenge and that completes the challenge. To learn more about the fantasy challenge, click here.

The only positive that resulted from AMC’s disastrous remake of The Prisoner was the reprinting of Thomas M. Disch’s novelization. The original was published by ACE BOOKS in 1969 and quickly went out-of-print. I was saddened by Disch’s death in 2008. His work struck me as original and clever. Disch published mostly science fiction. Ironically, his most successful book was The Brave Little Toaster, a book for children (and readers who are children at heart) which morphed into a couple of Disney animated movies. Disch captures the claustrophobia of The Village in his novel and explores the theme of identity. If you’re a fan of the original series, The Prisoner world of menace and mystery Disch explores will intrigue you.

The research regarding the power of green tea and red wine in disrupting the formation of cancer cells is persuasive. So now I’m drinking a glass of red wine and a bottle of green tea each day so I can live to be 300 and keep on blogging. I’ve tried various green teas and prefer Honest Tea’s Green Tea with Honey. It only contains 8 grams of carbs so it’s not going to spike anybody’s blood sugar. And it tastes refreshing. Honest Tea has several options for green tea: Community Green Tea with Maltese Orange, Just Green Tea Unsweetened, and Green Dragon Tea, for example. And there’s poetry under the bottle cap! Can’t beat that. If you want to check out the Honest Tea web site, click here.

Renee Fleming is a world-class vocalist, but this CD of pop songs fails on several levels. Many of the songs are dull and boring, for example, “Endlessly” and “No One’s Gonna Love You.” Fleming doesn’t project any enthusiasm for these songs. The most listenable songs on this CD are “In Your Eyes,” “Stepping Stone,” and “Hallelujah.” But none of these songs come close to Renee Fleming’s performances on Verismo, for example. Listening to Renee Fleming on Dark Hope is like driving a Ferrari at 20 miles per hour. GRADE: C+
PLAY LIST:
1 Endlessly 3:59
2 No One’s Gonna Love You 3:41
3 Oxygen 4:15
4 Today 3:22
5 Intervention 4:19
6 With Twilight As My Guide 5:33
7 Mad World 3:53
8 In Your Eyes 5:01
9 Stepping Stone 3:26
10 Soul Meets Body 3:11
11 Hallelujah 7:39

“Country noir” exudes from Daniel Woodrell’s grim Winter’s Bone. Set in the Ozarks, Ree Dolly, a teenager whose father has disappeared, is forced to try to find him. Jessup Dolly, known for his skill at brewing methamphetamine, has signed his property over to the bail bondsmen. If Ree doesn’t find Jessup, the shack that she, her two brothers, and their mentally disturbed mother share will be lost if Jessup doesn’t show up for his hearing. Doggedly, Ree searches for her missing father, but the suspicious and closed clannish culture gives her little assistance. Some have compared Ree Dolly to Mattie Ross in True Grit. I don’t agree. Ree resembles a character from a bleak Raymond Carver story. I’m eager to see the movie version of this stark novel. GRADE: B

This engaging remake of the classic 1984 original features Will Smith’s talented son, Jaden Smith, as Dru Parker. Dru and his mother move to China (she’s transferred because of her job). Dru immediately runs afoul of some thuggish teens. After taking a lot of physical punishment at their hands, Dru decides to learn karate. He finds an unlikely teacher: the maintenance man in his apartment building, Mr. Han (played by the genial Jackie Chan) who just happens to be a kung-fu master. Some of the training takes place in the scenic area around The Great Wall. Very nice. The story is predictable, but Jaden Smith’s charisma will carry you through to the exciting conclusion. GRADE: B+

For those of us in withdrawal from the cancellation of 24, help might be on its way tonight. Rubicon is an new TV series created by Jason Horwitch that’s scheduled to air on the AMC cable network. The series concerns an analyst at a national think tank who discovers that his employers may be part of a secret society that manipulates world events on a grand scale (sounds a bit like the movie The Adjustment Bureau with Matt Damon that’s supposed to be released on September 17). The series stars James Badge Dale, Lili Taylor, Miranda Richardson, Dallas Roberts, Christopher Evan Welch, Paul Butler and Peter Gerety. The series will debut on AMC on August 1, 2010 at 8:00 P.M. E.D.T. however AMC is giving us a sneak peek tonight at 11:00 P.M. E.D.T. I’m going to check it out. Check your listings for times in your area.